Captain's Log

Captain Utah

2010-05-28T19:18:00.001-07:00

As in any other profession, we pilots have our distinct class of odd balls and nut jobs, that work amongst us. Very few of these "different " individuals escape our attention. The reason for this, is that we pilots tend to be a harmonious group of people. We expect to have fun and enjoy ourselves, while flying around the planet, doing our job. If were not having fun, something, or someone is wrong.

After thirty years of flying with more individuals than I could ever count, very few pilots I have had anything to do with, fall into the odd ball, nut job category. The pilots I am describing generally include the pilots who live different lifestyles than your average pilot, the pilots that exhibit odd behaviors while working, and the pilots who are simply classified as jerks, assholes, or dumb asses.

In my thirty years of flying I have flown with every type of personality imaginable, but there have been a few pilots who impressed me so much with their unique personalities, their stories need to be told. To cope with a month or more of flying with these individuals, I gave them nicknames and told my friends and family about the quirkiness of the pilots I flew with. All of them were captains.

1.Captain Comfort Food.

Captain Comfort Food always made me feel like I was the most important and finest copilot that existed. He also took great strides to make me as comfortable as I could be. He also loved and always carried, bananas. If I showed up to an aircraft, unsure of who I was flying with, I always knew as soon as I entered the cockpit, that Captain Comfort Food was the man of the hour.

He would always beat me to the airplane. I would always find a blanket with a pillow laying in my seat, put there by Captain Comfort Food. He would take two prepackaged cookies and a banana and lay them on top of the pillow, using the cookies for eyes and the banana for a smiling mouth. In my drink holder would always be a cup of juice with ice. This would happen without fail, every time I flew with him. He also would do the exterior walk around inspection for me as well.

No matter where we had a layover, he somehow managed to always have a large supply of bananas. I asked him once where his never ending supply came from and all I got was, "It's my magic trick", from him. I never asked again. He had large enough banana supply, to offer a crew of flight attendants bananas as well.

He had memorized every aspect of my life, including the names of my children, my ex wife and my most current girlfriend. He would talk to me like Mr Rogers on steroids and instead of a family album, he had pictures of his private airplane collection. He talked without emotion, but I knew his words were meaningful and genuine. He would present me with small gifts to give to my children.

On every layover, Captain Comfort Food would disappear and usually go out to the airport early, in order to do the walk around, blanket, pillow, cookie, banana thing. Oh, yeah and the juice. The only time I ever saw him on a layover was once after flying a red-eye. I was not tired, so I decided to eat breakfast. Captain Comfort Food was in the cafe eating. He signaled me over, stood up when I came to the table and graciously asked me to join him. After eating, he insisted on buying my meal for me.

During the normal tasks of flying, he would politely ask for the reading of a checklist, or any other thing performed in the normal operation of an aircraft. "Thank you very much for reading the checklist, I appreciate how well you did that", he would say. His announcements to the passengers were prolific. He had an uncanny ability to chatter on to the passengers and they loved it.

Captain Comfort Food eventually retired. We were all surprised but happy to see him show up at union meetings in his retirement. The last time I saw him was at one of these meetings and in his hand was a half eaten banana.

2. Captain Art, the Great Hunter.

Art was one pissed off individual. I do not know of one copilot that enjoyed flying with him, except me. Art had no social skills whatsoever and seemed to constantly be putting his foot in his mouth, yet had no idea that that's what he was doing. He flew as often as he could, because in his own words, "I hate my house and the woman that lives in it." Art was not your average happily married guy.

The pilots who had to fly with him, usually complained about his abrasive personality, always demanding things at inappropriate times, and extremely hard to communicate with. I lucked out with my first encounter with Captain Art. I had heard all the griping and harsh rhetoric about the man, so I had built up a large amount of angst.

Captain Art beat me to the airplane and was busy programming the navigation computers. I stepped into the cockpit and introduced myself. Captain Art took one look at me and said, "Let me know if the log book is clean." "Sure, right away" I said. As I started to sit in my seat I noticed a small photo album laying on the center console. It was open and there was a picture of Captain Art, holding a high powered rifle, kneeling next to a huge bear.

"That's a big damn bear, mind if I look" I said. "Go ahead, I just got back from a hunt in Alaska." It just so happened that captain Art and I were on our way to Anchorage, Alaska, for a 24 hour layover. I picked up the photo album and said, "Let me get my work done, then I want to hear all about this." About an hour later, we were cruising at altitude, with hours to go until we landed. Captain Art, obviously enjoyed hunting, so I decided to try to keep him on that topic for as long as I could. It was not hard to do.

As Captain Art's hunting story unfolded, I found myself mesmerized by his experiences. The photo album was full of boring pictures, but behind each one,was a story. The picture of the bush plane, to me was just that. Captain Art told me how the pilot had to land uphill on rough tundra, to get him to his hunting site. Primitive tents and dry food was all they had for days, while they hunted out in the middle of nowhere. No communication whatsoever was to be had in case of an emergency. Five days later the bush pilot landed and carried out as much meat as he could, then came back to carry out Captain Art and his guide, with more meat. The pilot had to takeoff downhill and then drop off a ledge into a steep ravine to pick up enough speed to fly away. That trip was all he talked about on the way to Anchorage.

Once in Anchorage, we made our way to our hotel and went our separate ways. I was in the lobby a short while later, when Captain Art saw me and asked if I wanted to go to his favorite bar. I accepted his offer and I was told we could walk there. Downtown Anchorage is full of great places, but like any city, it has it's seedy side. This was many years ago and the city was not nearly as nice as it is now. Captain Art marched me past the very nice establishments, then the nice establishments, then the OK ones and on to the bad ones and finally the very bad ones. It was summer in Alaska and there was still plenty of light outside for me to notice the passed out drunks, prostitutes and numerous scary men. Art was about as milquetoast as you could get. Tan slacks with short sleeve shirt, tan loafers, with a baseball style hat sporting a fly fisherman on it. The text book example of someone that was prime meat to be rolled.

He pushed his way through the crowd and entered his bar, that had no name that I could see. The bar was large with one long bar, lots of tables and a section dedicated to playing pool. The place was packed and everyone there seemed to be native Alaskans. Captain Art took a stool at the bar and pushed the one next to him, over to me. " I've been coming here for years", he said. "Your the first copilot to have the balls to come to a place like this" he said. I said, "Naw, I'm just not very bright."

The bartender came over and said, "Captain Art, you brought a friend!" I introduced myself and ordered a beer. Seconds later the beer was placed in front of me along with a menu. The food was great and we spent a few hours there. In that time, no less than twenty people came up to Captain Art to say hello, buy him a beer, or ask him about his last hunt. He seemed to be the most popular guy in the bar and also the friendliest. Captain Art was in his place of comfort.

He had indeed been coming here for years. Over time, he got to know some of the workers and patrons and started fishing with them on his layovers. He then started to come up on his days off and take small fishing trips with them. Eventually he was passed on to friends and relatives in the remote villages, who would take him hunting and fishing. The man was respected and adored by these people. In particular, he was esteemed for his fishing and hunting skills. It was something you had to see to believe, this man who no one wanted to fly with, being the most affable guy you could imagine.

One very drunk man, carrying a pool cue, approached Captain Art holding the pool cue as if it was a rifle. The man stood back about six feet, with the tip of the pool cue about 6 inches away from Captain Art's nose. He yelled "Bang!" then lowered the pool cue with a huge grin, showing a mouth with half it's teeth missing. He started to talk, but all he could do was blabber the inaudible words of a drunk. I could clearly hear the words, "great hunter" from him several times. We left the bar at about 1 am and stepped outside to a sky still filled with light. It was the middle of June and the sun was just below the horizon. I thanked Captain Art on the way back to the hotel and told him I would fly with him anytime, no matter how much of a pain in the ass he could be. He stopped walking, looked at me and let out a gut wrenching laugh. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, "I am the biggest pain in the ass in the world and I have to live with him!' From that moment on, every time I saw him, I called him Captain Art, the Great Hunter.

The next day, we went out to breakfast to a spot not far from the bar. Some of the same people from the night before were already there, having left the bar early in the morning and heading directly to the cafe. The cafe was a one person show, owned and operated for 20 years by the sweetest woman you could ever meet. We sat there and talked over coffee for a couple of hours. He told me of his many hunting expeditions. The stories would make a best seller.

On our way home, Captain Art, fell into his normal routine. Somewhere in that day, I reminded him that by his self admission, he was being a pain in the ass. He looked directly at me and with a quizzical look and honestly said, "I am?"

We flew together several times after that. Captain Art was a very senior pilot, so he mostly flew the Alaska trips and that is where I would normally see him. He always had a new photo album to show off and great stories to go along with it. Captain Art, the Great Hunter eventually retired. His plan in retirement was to mount all the horns, heads, and stuffed bodies he had collected over the years. He was even preparing to buy a separate home to put them in as his wife had always refused to allow any of it in their home.

Captain Art was a diamond in the rough and one of the most skilled pilots I have ever flown with.

3. Captain Bloody Ass

I apologize ahead of time for this spoiler alert. This story is disgusting and may make you nauseous. I had seen Captain Bloody Ass way before I flew with him. He was not hard to miss as he was huge, somewhere in the 350 pound range. I had always heard great things about him and the copilots enjoyed working with him.

He was known for his "information sheets". These were sheets of paper that were filled from top to bottom with valuable information on specific subjects, that were put together by him. He had a sheet on tax deductions, one on all the things to do in Boston and another for touring the Napa Valley. He kept these in his flight kit and if a subject came up that he had relentlessly studied and made a sheet for, he would yank it out and explain it in detail, then give you the copy. I have no idea how many subjects he had covered, but it seemed like a lot.

The first time i flew with him was on a trip that took us from the west coast to Boston. Yes, he had a fact sheet to give me and I used it for years. One of the first things I noticed about him, was that in order for him to sit in his seat, he had to enter the cockpit backwards. He would enter the flight deck with his gear and position that first. Then he would exit and immediately re-enter backwards, quickly maneuvering himself into his seat. It was like watching a Rubik's Cube in fast motion and I never figured out how he did it.

The transition to the twilight zone with him, began just after we leveled off. We were cruising in the mid 30,000s and had about four hours of our flight left. Captain Bloody Ass looked over at me and told me he had something he wanted me to know. I looked over at him and he said, "I have a problem with infections and boils in my crotch area. My doctor told me that it would help if I keep that area dry. I use a hair dryer to do that. I think I used the hair dryer too long today and popped a vein, because I'm bleeding down there. I want you to know that, so in case I pass out, you'll know it is probably from blood loss and you can get me help."

After jacking my jaw back into my skull, several things went through my mind. My first thought went to the 110 volt electrical outlet next to my seat. Airplanes have electrical systems very different from what you have in your home. To allow the mechanics to power some of their tools while working in the cockpit, there is an electrical outlet on the copilots side of the aircraft. I don't know why, but an image of Captain Bloody Ass, bent over holding his ass cheeks apart, with me holding a hair dryer for him as per his doctors orders, popped into my head.

After shaking that nightmare out of my head, I told Captain Bloody Ass that it was hard for me to believe that you could heat a vein up enough to pop and not be screaming in agony. I also told him that there could very well be something deeply wrong with him and he should see a doctor.

Captain Bloody Ass proceeded to tell me about his daughter and her family, who were going to meet him in Boston and stay at the hotel for the two days we were going to be there. "I'll see a doctor as soon as I get back" he said.

I let it go, which was the wrong thing to do. I figured if he did have a problem, I could land the plane by myself. Today, as a captain, I would never put my copilot in that position and certainly not a plane load of passengers.

Captain Bloody Ass went to the bathroom a lot. He would get up out of his seat at least once an hour or more and use the first class lavatory. On his first trip to the bathroom, a flight attendant was in the flight deck to open the door for me. She was standing behind Captain Bloody Asses seat, when I heard her say, "What's that?" I said, "What?" "That" she said, pointing to Captain Bloody Asses seat.

Captain Bloody Ass had taken a gray plastic trash bag and laid it on his seat. A thin layer of blood was spread across the entire plastic bag. I looked at her and in a panicky, loud voice, yelled, "I don't know!" She looked at me like I had worms coming out of my face. Captain Bloody Ass re-entered the cockpit in his usual backwards manner. The remainder of the flight was uneventful until we got to Boston.

After landing, Captain Bloody Ass told me to go ahead to the hotel pickup point. He told me that he walked slowly and it would take him a while to get there. I suggested to him that he go ahead and I would finish the flight deck duties. He agreed and left the aircraft. About 5 minutes later I left the aircraft. I said goodnight to the gate agent and proceeded through the terminal to the pickup point.

There is a long straight stretch of the terminal that you walked through to exit. I was walking through that part of the terminal when about 200 feet in front of me, I spotted Captain Bloody Ass, hobbling his way through the terminal. Between him and I was a cleaning woman. The floor of the terminal was poured and polished acrylic. She was holding a long stick with a rag on the end of it. She was rubbing the scuff marks of the days hurried passengers off the floor. She was facing me, walking backwards, with headphones on. She was in what I would call a Zen state. Music was filling her psyche, overwhelming the reality of constant scuff mark erasure. She almost looked like the finely balanced ice skater moving backwards with such ease, it reminded you of a cool mountain stream, flowing naturally, without effort.

During this time, I was catching up to her and Captain Bloody Ass. I was now about thirty feet away from Captain Bloody Ass and 15 feet away from the cleaning lady. I noticed something protruding from the right leg of Captain Bloody Ass. It was large and getting bigger. All at once, a large blood soaked lump of toilet paper, about the size of two large fists, fell to the floor, from the right pant leg of Captain Bloody Ass.

I saw this as I was passing the cleaning lady, who was aligned with the bloody mass of paper. My second mistake of the day was to make a wide sweeping evasive maneuver to avoid the bloody mass and NOT inform the cleaning woman of her impending CSI like encounter. I just kept moving, trying to obliterate the entire day out of my head.

I have no idea what happened to the cleaning woman. I am sure though, that when she came across the wad of blood soaked toilet paper, she wasn't thinking, "I wonder who's ass this came from?" As for me, that is the end of the story of Captain Bloody Ass. He had a great time with his family and we made it back without him passing out from blood loss. Captain Bloody Ass retired soon after this incident, but not because of his medical condition. Several pilots in his age group left to maximize their retirement.

So, what are the lessons here? I have been trained and tested for thirty years in a career where those above you, give you the experiences that lead you to being the best aviator you can be. I was hired 22 years ago to be a captain someday. Well, here I am, enjoying the best days of my career and I have the captains that tested me, to thank for that.

Captain Comfort Food showed me that no matter who you fly with, turn your spotlight on them and let them know they are appreciated.

Captain Art, The Great Hunter, taught me to look beyond the exterior of those you fly with and to take the time and patience to explore what is beneath.

Captain Bloody Ass helped me define my limits as a captain, around the concept of safety and the need to put all others above my immediate needs.

These are just three individuals of hundreds that have impacted who I am as a pilot. I thank them all and all the pilots who will take my wisdom as part of their future.

As for the title of this story, Captain Utah, well, that is something a young copilot educated me on recently. We were having a great trip and while hovering at a high rate of speed on our way to somewhere, he said to me, "I'm really glad your not a Captain Utah." "Captain Utah?" I said. He said, "Yeah, it stands for Up Tight Ass Hole."

I guess there is still much for me to learn.

Be Safe,

FlyGuy

IN THE PASSING LANE

2010-02-14T18:55:00.000-08:00

The hi-ways of our national air transportation system, are fairly busy any day of the year. The jet routes, or roads, that pilots fly on, have multiple levels that are separated by one thousand feet. These jet routes start at 18,000 feet and go up to over 40,000 feet. Airplanes flying to the east, fly at odd altitudes and airplanes flying west, fly at even altitudes. Aircraft going in one direction are separated 2000 feet apart. Traffic going in the opposite direction is layered in between these aircraft 2000 feet apart. What you end up with are airplanes going 500 mph, flying in opposite directions, only 1000 feet apart. That's close!

In the cockpit, it ends up as a fun event to watch, over and over again, as you fly along the jet routes. Modern airliners are easily capable of maintaining this separation. All commercial aircraft have electronic devices that allow us to see the location and the altitude of aircraft around us, day or night, good weather, or bad. Sometimes, like today, you slowly catch up and pass a jet going in the same direction, 2000 feet above or below you. The video I attached was taken as we were overtaking a jet on our way from LAX to JFK, somewhere east of Albuquerque. The aircraft was 2000 feet below us. I did use the optical zoom on my camera to capture the exhaust trails from the engines.

The video is close to what we observe. Youtube has a good video depicting a 24 hour moving graphic of air traffic in the U.S. at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E_Z_Ve-ayA.

I would like to direct anyone interested to my good buddy and pilot Joe, who maintains the podcast "Fly With Me."
He is strarting a live podcast that starts next week. Should be pretty entertaining. The following is the email he sent to me,

"The first Fly With Me Live broadcast will be Sunday, Feb 21 at 1:00 PM PST. It will be on Ustream.tv (link below). I hope you can join us. My guest will be "Betty" from the "Betty in the Sky With a Suitcase" podcast -- she'll appear via Skype video. And she's hilarious.

I will be encouraging viewers to call in via Skype to join in the conversation with us -- so make sure your Skype setup is ready! The call-in Skype address is "fwm_live".

If you don't want to call in, there will be chat via Ustream chat and the "social stream"(Twitter, Facebook, etc.). You can ask us questions about anything you want. And then we can just say whatever we want in return ;-) I hope you can participate, because this will be a lot of fun.

Also, let your friends know about the show -- I'm sure they'll enjoy it. You can just forward this email -- here's the link to the show: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/fly-with-me-live

Hope to see you there,

Joe

http://flywithjoe.com
Twitter: @Joe_dEon"

Be Safe,

FlyGuy

Fallen Soldier Redux

2010-02-09T22:37:00.000-08:00

I continue to receive comments on my post, "FALLEN SOLDIER" One comment deserves attention. It was written by a member of the company honor guard. FlyGuy was humbled to tears when I read this individuals' comment. I wish I could shake the hands and look into the eyes of every one of these men and women, who give so much of themselves, to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for all of us. The following comment has not been changed in any way. God Bless you all.

"Great story Fly Guy, however we are the XXXXX Air Lines Honor Guard. We have worked with the patriot riders on a few escorts.

We honor all those who serve in the military in any branch and in any capacity, we have honored those who have been MIA for over 65 years from WWII to a young man who passed away his last day of boot camp. I have personally never served a day in my life. I am honored to be surrounded by many agents who have served and few who have not but are just as dedicated. Some have served in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait and Viet Nam, Two have lost family, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.

These people are dedicated and have no problem rendering honors in the rain, cold, wind and blistering heat on the ramp. I have people show up on their days off, before work, after work and even on vacation to help. This group is all volunteer, no extra pay or benefits no extra days off just the satisfaction that they have honored a person who has committed their lives to protecting ours and our great way of life. One thing I do not think most people realize is many times the escorts are themselves related to the service members. A few recent ones I will never forget.

An Air Force pilot that was shot down in Viet Nam in 1968 and finally recovered and identified was traveling through ATL on his way to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. We went to render honors, and I went upstairs to get the escort, he had elderly woman with him and asked if she could come down as well, I agreed and we went down and preformed honors and when I gave him the card and coin to give to the next of kin he referred me to this small frail woman, she was the pilots wife. She is 81 years old and had been waiting 41 years for him to come home, she was in awe that a group of total strangers would take the time to honor a man none of us knew. She personally thanked everyone and then the Air Force escort pointed to his wrist, there on his wrist was an MIA/POW bracelet for this pilot he had been wearing for the last 17 years...

I had an escort come off a flight, a Command Sergeant Major, 30 years in the U.S. Army, a man to be both respected and feared. The honor guard had finished rendering honors on the remains he was escorting, an 18 year old “girl” who was killed in Afghanistan, I was getting ready to take the escort upstairs to board the flight when he asked me If I had any children, and if any were serving in the military, I told him “yes” I have three sons and my oldest was deployed in Afghanistan. He was trembling and asked that I give my boys a hug and next time I talked to my son in Afghanistan to let him know how much I loved him “because you never know.” The “girl” he was escorting was his daughter...

On April 24th we had an escort come off the flight from HNL and then connecting on to DFW I had done some research and had found out the remains were that of SSgt XXXXX of the United States Army Air Force, shot down in his B-24 in September of 1944. Normally if the remains is army the escort is army and so on. SSgt XXXXX escort was a United States Marine. This gentleman would not leave the remains for a second and was absolutely dedicated to watching over his ward. After rendering honors on SSgt XXXXX the escort asked if he could address the honor guard. At this point Captain XXXXX, USMC wanted to thank us and everyone at Delta Air Lines for the manner in we transported and the homecoming of SSgt XXXXX, his grandfather whom he had never met...

On October 8, 2008 my eldest son Sr. Airman Brian J McConnell Jr. USAF escorted the remains of my father MSgt Angus J. McConnell {USAF retired} through Atlanta. I was filled with many emotions that day, sadness for the loss of my dad and over whelming love and pride for my son and his commitment to honor his grandfather and get him home. I will forever be grateful to my Delta family for the respect and honor shown to my family and myself. Thank You All..."

Be Safe,

FlyGuy

International Flying

2010-01-27T19:16:00.000-08:00

Greetings all,

I know I have been absent for a while, a new interest will do that to you. Last October I made a transition to international flying, which has made my job more interesting and enjoyable than ever. The picture I included here, was taken taxiing out of the Guatemala City airport. There are many active volcanoes in the area that keep things interesting. The volcano in the picture is popular with the local touring companies. I have been told that there are no safety rules at all on some of the tours. You can get as close to the lava flows as you want. One company offers shoes you can wear, so yours don't melt. FlyGuy likes a larger safety margin than that! I arrived in Guatemala City on new years eve, at 6:30 in the morning. I had high expectations of a loud and festive day and night.

I Googled "new years in Guatemala" and the first thing that popped up was a description of a popular thing that the men do. The men, it said, like to wear costumes mad out of fireworks. These costumes are quite elaborate and when lit, produce a running fireworks show. Compound this with numerous individuals running around at once, all on fire, producing a shower of sparks and explosive noises and most probably screaming at the same time. This was something that I had to see.

I asked the hotel employees where the action was on new years. I was told by everyone that "Today is a quiet day, everything will not be open." I ventured out of the hotel into a ghost town. The hotel staff was correct, everything it seemed was closed. We saw a crowd at the end of the block, so we went to see what they were doing. It turned out to be an organized run, with the participants wearing costumes. The first person I saw was running in a diaper. It was hilarious what people were wearing. I saw a guy in a barrel, Sponge Bob, Iron man, a pineapple, and all sorts of oddities. After about 20 minutes of this, the street once again became quiet and stayed that way for the rest of the night. We were lucky to find a small restaurant open, which was great.

I returned to Guatemala 2 days later carrying a large group of young performers, who marched in the Rose Parade in California. They talked about the excitement of being in America and how proud and honored they were by the cheering of the crowds they marched by. I don't think any of them was older than 18.

Last week I worked a flight to Jamaica. The Jamaicans are very fun people, who never seem to stop smiling. Next week I'll be in the Virgin Islands. I love this international stuff!

Be Safe,

FlyGuy

VANISHED

2009-06-16T20:08:00.000-07:00

I had finished a two-day trip a few weeks ago, and started my commute home. When I landed in Los Angeles, I heard the news about the Air France flight that had disappeared over the Atlantic. I walked across the airport to my departure terminal, thinking about what the pilots went through, trying to save their ship. I got onboard the jet taking me home, feeling melancholy. I wanted to sit alone, but most of the seats were taken.

When I find myself on a full flight and I have to sit between two people, I have found a way to make the travel easy on me. I try to find a row that has two young ladies in it, about the age of my oldest daughter, who is twenty. I do this because I know that they want to have nothing to do with me and will leave me alone for the entire flight. I can sit in my seat, put in my earplugs and don my noise reduction headset and sit back.

On this flight I saw a small pair of legs at the end of a row and no head above the seat. As I came up to the row, I saw two boys about six years old sitting next to each other. The window seat was vacant. “Excuse me gentleman, is that seat by the window taken?” I asked. They looked up at me, looked at each other and simultaneously said, “Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” “Do you guys mind?” I said. They did not mind and I started to move around them to the window. The father of one of the boys said, “Sir, you don’t have to sit there, you can sit in my seat.” I looked at him and his pretty wife and said, “Sir I am a commercial airline pilot, I have more in common with these boys than any adult on this aircraft.” I heard laughter from other passengers and moved into my seat.

I was immediately asked if I was a pilot. When I told them that I was, one of the boys turned to his parents and yelled, “Mom, this man is a real pilot and he is sitting right by me!” The mother of the boy said, “Shouldn’t he be flying the airplane up front?” I told the boys that I was going to use my Iphone and control the airplane from my seat. These guys were smart ones, they did not buy it.

We pushed back and the engines were started. I told them how high we would be, how fast we would be going, and how cold it would be. As we started to take the runway for takeoff, I said, “This is the part where I start to get scared.” They looked at me and one of them said, “You mean to fly?” I looked at them and whined, “I want my mommy.” just as the plane started to accelerate. The boy at the aisle turned to his mother laughing and yelled, “Mom, he wants his mommy!”

I told the boy next to me that when I counted to three, the airplane would come off the ground and start flying. After thousands of takeoffs, you get pretty good at knowing that. I counted, 1, 2, 3, and the nose lifted up into the air. The boys eyes got very big and he said in a low voice, “Your really smart.”

I put my headset on and flipped the switch that takes the noise out of the air like a magician. One of the boys asked me what I was listening to. I told him it was church music and asked them both if they wanted to listen. They both refused and immediately started playing with their electronic games. I smiled as I leaned back, fell asleep and did not wake until the wheels touched down. It was a brief respite from the mind churning disaster of the Air France loss.

Over these 28 years of flying, I have experienced, second hand, the tragic loss of many, most of whom I did not know. As pilots, we can’t help but put ourselves on the flight deck and in the pilot’s seats, trying to recover these aircraft from impending disaster. There are the safety reports stating the facts, built from expert investigation, clearly showing the causes and contributing circumstances. Some of these reports make you wince in anguish, knowing the accident was preventable. The hardest ones to read are the accidents that clearly show the pilots were performing in perfect form and fearlessly doing everything and anything they could to save their ship, to the point of impact.

Modern airliners are designed with self-reporting system monitors. The electric, hydraulic, pneumatic, fuel, engine, environmental and other systems send out messages in-flight when certain predetermined parameters are met. An example would be when the internal part of an engine starts to vibrate beyond a preset limit. The engine may run just fine and I as a pilot would not know that the limit was exceeded, or that a message was sent. The message would be logged and analyzed by the engineers at the airline and perhaps the manufacturer as well.

The Air France pilots never transmitted a message that they were experiencing mechanical problems, or any problem for that matter. I read that they informed air traffic control that they were entering an area of severe weather, something that happens every day with airliners around the world. Something went wrong and went wrong quickly. The aircraft transmitted over 20 messages by itself, electronically informing the company that systems were failing. Then there was nothing, the flight simply disappeared.

Yeah, it really bothers me. All we can do as aviators is to learn what lessons we can and make our already safe air transportation system, safer yet.

Be Safe,

FlyGuy.

Hot Gas

2009-05-19T19:49:00.000-07:00

The cacophony of a busy airport terminal reminds me of a living, breathing thing, with a mind of its own. Arriving at these airports is just the start of the experience. You know that parking your car, or being dropped off, is the easiest part of the painful process, that eventually leads to sitting in a seat, that moves through the sky.

As a commercial airline pilot I get to avoid most of the pain. We are dropped off and picked up at every airport, our hotel keys are usually waiting for us, we can go to the front of the line at security, we do not have to wait in the gate area to board, it is illegal to enter my office and under the right conditions, a person could be shot if they tried.

Although we are shielded from much of this pain, we can’t help but feel yours. It is agonizing to watch the flying public endure the constant barrage of ever changing rules, policies, fare structures, monotonous public addresses, lines, more lines, weather delays, cancellations, gate changes, oversells, holiday nightmares, bad food, no food, confiscated items, frustrated parents, beeping electric carts, overflowing bathrooms, expensive food courts, no one in sight to help you, signs that don’t help you, rude employees, no employees, etc.

My company's JFK operation is now spread over 3 terminals and a remote parking pad. It is possible to go through security at one terminal, only to find out that your flight is actually leaving two terminals away. My company set up an inter-terminal transportation system to move people from terminal to terminal, thus avoiding having to go through security a second time. The passengers are taken directly to their gate or holding area. The problem I have recently noticed is that nobody has ever bothered to inform the passengers of this cumbersome process.

I had one frustrated, angry, and tearful passenger explain to me how she eventually got to the proper gate, which I was waiting at, as I was working the flight to LAX. She was dropped off at one terminal, spent forever going through security, and emerged into the wrong terminal. She was told to proceed to the next terminal that was connected. She did that only to find out she had to be transported from that terminal to the correct one. She waited for the bus and was transported to a holding area at the next terminal. There she met me and proceeded to vent. I completely agreed with her and asked her

not to shoot the messenger, but that her saga was not quite over. “Our airplane is parked remotely, so we all have to be transported out to it on a big people mover”, I said. She thought I was joking. I apologized and told her that once she got on that last bus, her worries were over. I told her that she was in good hands; that her crew would take care of her and safely do the job that she had paid for. “When you sit in your seat on my airplane, let go of all of this and relax.” I gave her two dollars for a headset, so she could watch the 30 channels of entertainment onboard.

We boarded the bus with the first group of passengers. I was told there would be three busloads coming to the airplane. I talked to the passengers near me and told them our flight time to LAX, the weather en-route, and that I anticipated no delays. I could tell they were listening to everything I was telling them. Others were straining to hear me. I am continually humbled by the respect I receive from my passengers, even the angry ones.

With my passengers in their seats and the entry and flight deck doors closed, the time comes that every pilot enjoys, the movement of metal.

Moving an aircraft around JFK is usually an experience all in itself. Dozens of aircraft of every size are working their way through the labyrinth of taxiways, intersections, and long lines. Very long lines. Throw in some snow or a thunderstorm and we might enjoy a couple of hours of taxi time. Eventually we taxi into the takeoff position at the end of our assigned runway, my right hand would be resting on the throttles, awaiting a take off clearance.

The checklists are complete and we receive our takeoff clearance. The moment has come to once again witness the miracle of powered flight, and the best part of the miracle, is that I get to make it happen. As the throttles are slowly moved forward, the engine instruments are monitored as the power in the engines awake in a thundering roar. Acceleration is fast and steady and I feel the awkward contortions of my aircraft diminish into a determined metallic beast, begging me to let go of its leash.

My right hand is relaxed on the throttles, ready to reject our takeoff at the last possible moment, if needed. Critical speeds are called out. The engines would be howling at maximum power, devouring and shredding tons of air, smashing and compressing it into a hellish conflagration, then releasing it all at once, a fraction of a second later. With nowhere else to go, the turbulent expanding gases escape from the narrow exhaust cone, pushing the machine faster.

These hot gases, produce 90% of the engines thrust by turning the big fan blades you see at the front of the engine. These engines have accumulated over 26 million flight hours of service since their introduction. Yeah, they are reliable and one of the reasons flying is so safe. The thrill and rush of controlling these technological marvels with my fingertips is an experience that never gets old.

Be Safe,

FlyGuy.

FALLEN SOLDIER, THE REST OF THE STORY

2008-10-27T21:20:00.000-07:00

My post, “Fallen Soldier”, received thousands of views this past weekend. I am writing this post to tell you what happened after that flight and some things I have just come to know.

After the family was taken off the aircraft, they were immediately escorted down to the ramp and the cargo door. I found out last week that the team of escorts that met the aircraft to assist the family, are employee volunteers. These employees come from all areas of the airline for the single purpose of giving a fallen soldier the honor, respect, and dignity they deserve during their final journey home. I am proud to tell you that the corporation I work for unconditionally supports the efforts of this group of volunteers.

They call themselves the Patriot Guard Riders and have all volunteer teams in Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, Norfolk, Salt Lake City, and Seattle. The Atlanta team has special jumpsuits made by a uniform supplier, displaying a military seal on the back. The team members render honors along with the military escorts and pay last respects to deceased service men and women as they are transported through the airport. Most volunteers are former service men and women or have family who are or were in the military. They have flags and when possible present a commemorative medallion on behalf of my company to the soldier’s family with the inscription: “We will not forget their sacrifice.”

I found this quote on the company's employee website, written by the senior vice president of customer service. I have replaced names with the letter “X”, to remain anonymous in my writing. “Were proud of our honor guard volunteers who represent XXXXX in paying special honors to the men and women who have served our country. The ceremony is not only meaningful to the families, but for everyone who has the privilege of seeing it.”

The article on the website was about the return of U.S Air Force Capt. Lorenza Conner, a pilot killed when he was shot down in Vietnam, in 1967. According to the article, his remains were discovered and identified last year. Apparently Capt Conner is a Georgia native and his remains were returning home for burial. One of our pilots, a Vietnam vet himself, piloted the last leg home from Honolulu. One of the Guard Riders was quoted, “I am doing this in part as a XXXXX employee, but I ride escort as a Ride Captain with the Patriot Guard Riders, escorting fallen soldiers home during funeral services.” Some of these volunteers use their free time to ride along with the remains to their final destination, all the way to burial.

I must throw in a thumbs up for the countless flight attendants who go out of their way to thank every service member in uniform as they exit the aircraft upon arrival. I listen to boarding announcements where along with the normal words, a statement is made to the cabin that there are military members on board today and that their service is appreciated.

Back to the family and their journey home with their son, husband and father. The team escorted the family to the cargo hold. After thanking the rest of the passengers, I proceeded to the pilot lounge as I had a couple of hours to go before my next flight. The lounge is a large area with computers, lockers, tables, chairs, etc. There normally is a lot of traffic there. I saw a friend of mine who was in my original training class twenty years ago. I have always liked Dave, he and I have bantered back and forth for years.

You see, Dave was a fighter pilot and I flew the heavy cargo planes. Dave was a dashing young fighter pilot in the day, crazy as they come and damn good at what he did. He taught fighter pilots, how to teach fighter pilots. His weapon of choice was the F-16. I flew cargo all over the world; doing some things I will never be able to tell you. My weapon of choice was a small Swiss army knife. It could open a can of beefaroni or a bottle of beer. My mission was to constantly seek the ultimate beaches, rivers, ice fields, and other naturally spectacular places, wherever I went.

Although Dave was an Air Force pilot, he managed to learn to swear like a sailor. Dave is now in his fifties and I can attest to the simple fact that he has officially made the transition to being a loud and crusty old fighter pilot. I had not seen him in a while so I walked up and pinched his left nipple as hard as I could. “Jesus, you dumb bastard, let me kick you in the nuts!”, he said, while not one other pilot bothered to look our way. “Hey, I was just making sure you were still alive. That stupid ass grin you keep on that pasty white sheet, you call a face, makes you look like a mannequin”, I said. And so it goes for a few minutes. We finally settle down and catch up on life, his in Florida, mine in California. I asked him if he had time to get a bite to eat. He said, “Yeah, I don’t sign in for a few hours, I work a flight to Norfolk at 4:30.”

“Norfolk!” I said. “Is it flight XXXX?” I said. Dave was flying the soldier home on his last leg. I proceeded to tell Dave what had happened on my flight. At one point, Dave flushed crimson red, and then tears welled up in his eyes. “Fuck, I cry like a god damn baby every time I hear stories like that”, he said. “Well listen up soldier, you have the honor of taking him home and I have a mission for you”, I said. We talked a bit longer and I had to leave. Dave knew the family was going to be escorted back down to the cargo hold to watch the soldiers’ remains be put aboard his aircraft. Dave was planning on getting to the gate early to introduce himself to the family and escort. He wanted to be standing with them outside, if the family wanted that. That crusty ass fighter pilot was on a mission and nothing was going to stop him from doing anything and everything he could for that family. They could not have been in better hands.

I have not seen Dave since that day. Somewhere down the road we will catch up with each other and I will ask him how the rest of that day went. In the mean time, the honor, respect, and dignity that our fallen soldiers deserve, will continue 24/7 at my company. I am sure other airlines have good people doing the same type of thing. As of Saturday, October 25th, the U.S. deaths in Iraq totaled 4,187. The U.S. deaths in Afghanistan totaled 549. Spc Deon L. Taylor, 30, Bronx, N.Y., Cpl Adrian Robles, 21, Scottsbluff, Neb. and Lance Cpl San Sim, 23, Santa Ana, Ca, who died this week in service to their country, deserve nothing less.

Be Safe,

FlyGuy

The Right Thing To Do

2008-10-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

I was busy programming my flight computer for a JFK to San Francisco flight, when I heard the lead flight attendant make a public address announcement. "If I could have your attention for a moment", she said. She continued with, "We have a mother and young child that do not have seats together. I am looking for two volunteers with adjacent seats who would like to volunteer to give up their seats, so they can sit together". A few minutes later I heard her ask again for seat volunteers.

I picked up the cabin inter phone and made an announcement over the public address system. I said, "Barbara, this is the captain speaking, If you cannot find two volunteers to give up their seats, the copilot and I are more than happy to give our seats away to the mother and child". I heard laughter from the first class section over my ridiculous statement.

I turned around to look into the first class section. As I did so, I saw two first class passengers get up out of their seats and walk back into coach. Less than a minute later I saw a woman and a small boy sit in the same two first class seats. Yes, they sat next to each other. Gotta say I was pretty impressed with that random act of kindness.

I told the copilot what I had just witnessed and he said, "Hell boss, if it makes you feel any better I would be more than willing to give up my seat for yours". I am still mad at myself for not having a snappy comeback for that one, all I could muster was, "Alright smart ass, before start checklist".

Be Safe,

FlyGuy

What is that thing?

2008-08-20T21:54:00.000-07:00

The number one reason why I will never get tired of this job, is the simple fact that you never know what will come your way on any flight. I recently had a once in a career experience that I would like to share with you.

I was descending into JFK on a clear summer night, the first officer was the pilot flying. We were vectored for a visual approach to runway 22 left. Runway 22 left at JFK is in a dark area of the airfield. The approach and touchdown was uneventful. Once we were on the ground, the speed brakes deployed and the first officer extended the thrust reversers. As I verified these configuration changes, I focused my attention on runway alignment and our deceleration. I looked down the runway and noticed a dark area in the dark background of the runway.

Something was not right about that. I said to the first officer, "I think there is something on the runway, right side". He said, "Yeah that looks weird". "How about you move to the left side of center line", I said. He moved the aircraft laterally and about 3 seconds later, at about 120 mph, we zipped past a large engine cowling sitting in the middle of the right side of the runway. I later figured out that our right engine missed that huge piece of metal by about 20 feet.

"Tower XXXXXX 1420", I said. "Go ahead" was the reply from tower. " At about the 4000 foot remaining marker, in the middle of the right side of the runway, there is a large engine cowling that poses a great danger". "United XXXX go around", was the immediate response from the tower controller. The ground and tower controllers at JFK are some of the best, anywhere. I have a high degree of respect for the job they do everyday, without fail. That tower controller coordinated the closure of runway 22 left, the canceling of all departures on runway 22 right and the sequencing of all airborne aircraft to the remaining available runway to land.

My words to the controller started a sequence of events that would take the better part of an hour to finally settle down to normal operations. Where I was able to get a word in, I gave the controller as much information as I could. The engine cowling was big, about 10 feet across. The aircraft that landed in front of us asked me what color the cowling was. I told them that at 120 mph I was just trying to void it, it was dark out there and I could not help him. The tower controller told me that their ground radar was picking up an object about that size, in the area that I told him I saw the cowling. The newer ground radar systems must be pretty good to pick up something that size.

There was about 10 seconds of silence, when that aircraft transmitted to the tower that they thought they might be missing an engine cowling. Hitting that cowling at a high rate of speed could be catastrophic for any aircraft. That night it was no harm, no foul. A serious disruption in the normal operations of JFK, as the international departures were at their peak.

I doubt that this will ever happen to me again, but that is the same thing I said to my daughter when she backed into the neighbor's car the first time.

Be Safe,

FlyGuy.

Fallen Soldier

2008-07-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

Another 4^th of July is here and all across the nation, millions of us will celebrate in thousands of different ways. Our military members around the world will miss out on hometown celebrations, instead, performing the duties assigned to them. This story is in honor of them.

As a commercial pilot, I too see the effects of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last month I showed up to start a trip and was approached by a gate agent. “Captain, good morning, I wanted to inform you that we have H.R. on this flight”, she said. H.R. stands for human remains. “Are they military?”, I asked. “Yes”, she said. “Is there and escort?”, I asked. “Yes, I already assigned him a seat”, she said. “Would you please tell him to come to the flight deck, you can board him early”, I said.

A short while later, a young army sergeant entered the flight deck. He was the image of the perfectly dressed soldier. He introduced himself and I asked him about his soldier. The escorts of these fallen soldiers talk about them as if they are still alive and with us. “My soldier is on his way back to Virginia”, he said. He proceeded to answer my questions, but offered no words on his own. I asked him if there was anything I could do for him and he said no. I told him that he has the toughest job in the military and that I appreciated the work that he does for the families of our fallen soldiers. The first officer and I got up out of our seats to shake his hand. He left the flight deck to find his seat.

We completed our preflight checks, pushed back and performed an uneventful departure. About 30 minutes into our flight I received a call from the lead flight attendant in the cabin. “I just found out the family of the soldier we are carrying, is onboard”, he said. He then proceeded to tell me that the father, mother, wife and 2-year-old daughter were escorting their son, husband, and father home. The family was upset because they were unable to see the container that the soldier was in before we left. We were on our way to a major hub at which the family was going to wait 4 hours for the connecting flight home to Virginia. The father of the soldier told the flight attendant that knowing his son was below him in the cargo compartment and being unable to see him was too much for him and the family to bare. He had asked the flight attendant if there was anything that could be done to allow them to see him upon our arrival. The family wanted to be outside by the cargo door to watch the soldier being taken off the airplane. I could hear the desperation in the flight attendants voice when he asked me if there was anything I could do. “I’m on it”, I said. I told him that I would get back to him.

Airborne communication with my company normally occurs in the form of email like messages. I decided to bypass this system and contact my flight dispatcher directly on a secondary radio. There is a radio operator in the operations control center who connects you to the telephone of the dispatcher. I was in direct contact with the dispatcher. I explained the situation I had onboard with the family and what it was the family wanted. He said he understood and that he would get back to me.

Two hours went by and I had not heard from the dispatcher. We were going to get busy soon and I needed to know what to tell the family. I sent a text message asking for an update. I saved the return message from the dispatcher and this following is the text.

“Captain, sorry it has taken so long to get back to you. There is policy on this now and I had to check on a few things. Upon your arrival a dedicated escort team will meet the aircraft. The team will escort the family to the ramp and planeside. A van will be used to load the remains with a secondary van for the family. The family will be taken to their departure area and escorted into the terminal where the remains can be seen on the ramp. It is a private area for the family only. When the connecting aircraft arrives, the family will be escorted onto the ramp and planeside to watch the remains being loaded for the final leg home. Captain, most of us here in flight control are veterans. Please pass our condolences on to the family, thanks.”

I sent a message back telling flight control thanks for a good job. I printed out the message and gave it to the lead flight attendant to pass on to the father. The lead flight attendant was very thankful and told me, “You have no idea how much this will mean to them.” Things started getting busy for the descent, approach and landing.

After landing, we cleared the runway and taxied to the ramp area. The ramp is huge with 15 gates on either side of the alleyway. It is always a busy area with aircraft maneuvering every which way to enter and exit. When we entered the ramp and checked in with the ramp controller, we were told that all traffic was being held for us. “There is a team in place to meet the aircraft”, we were told. It looked like it was all coming together, then I realized that once we turned the seat belt sign off, everyone would stand up at once and delay the family from getting off the airplane. As we approached our gate, I asked the copilot to tell the ramp controller we were going to stop short of the gate to make an announcement to the passengers. He did that and the ramp controller said, “Take your time.”

I stopped the aircraft and set the parking brake. I pushed the public address button and said, “Ladies and gentleman, this is your captain speaking. I have stopped short of our gate to make a special announcement. We have a passenger on board who deserves our honor and respect. His name is private XXXXXX, a soldier who recently lost his life. Private XXXXXX is under your feet in the cargo hold. Escorting him today is army sergeant XXXXXXX. Also onboard are his father, mother, wife, and daughter. Your entire flight crew is asking for all passengers to remain in their seats to allow the family to exit the aircraft first. Thank you.”

We continued the turn to the gate, came to a stop and started our shutdown procedures. A couple of minutes later I opened the cockpit door. I found the two forward flight attendants crying, something you just do not see. I was told that after we came to a stop, every passenger on the aircraft stayed in their seats, waiting for the family to exit the aircraft. When the family got up and gathered their things, a passenger slowly started to clap their hands. Moments later more passengers joined in and soon the entire aircraft was clapping. Words of “God Bless You, I’m sorry, Thank you, Be proud, and other kind words were uttered to the family as they made their way down the aisle and out of the airplane. They were escorted down to the ramp to finally be with the loved one lost.

I never did see the family. Another soldier died, another family grieved and we did what we could. That is the way it works sometimes. I get a call from the cabin and we work as a team to do what we can. That day everybody from the flight crew, to the operations center, to the 184 passengers onboard, we did what we could. Many of the passengers disembarking thanked me for the announcement I made. They were just words, I could say them over and over again, but nothing I say will bring that soldier back. I respectfully ask that all of you reflect on this day and the sacrifices that millions of men and women have made to ensure our freedom, safety, and the right to live a good life.

Be safe,

FlyGuy.

Jungle Pool

2008-04-30T18:11:00.000-07:00

I found this incredible freshwater pool during a hike in the Dominican Republic. I have never seen anything like this, natural, refreshingly cool water, and no people. I have been working on a war story, that will soon be posted.

Be Safe, FlyGuy

Cheap Bastards

2008-03-23T22:18:00.000-07:00

When my company hired me two decades ago, one of the first things I noticed about many of my fellow pilots was that they were cheap bastards. I consider this to be a compliment to my fellow aviators.

These pilots were not cheap when it came time to splitting the dinner bill, as they were all quite gracious in paying up. As a new guy, I had many meals and drinks bought for me by the captains I flew with. “I don’t want your money, just do this for your copilots when you’re a captain”, they would say. A friend of mine had one captain sternly make him take back the money he had just given the captain, for the prior evenings’ dinner bill. They were in the cockpit when the captain thrust the money back at the copilot and said, “God damn it, I told you I didn’t want any fuckin money and when I say I don’t want your fuckin money, that means I don’t want your fuckin money! We have two more days of flying together dip shit and if I see one fuckin red cent come out of your pocket, I will cut your dic off and use it for a pitot tube!” A fraction of a second later the senior flight attendant burst into the cockpit and screamed, “Everything you just said went over the public address system, stop talking!” The captain had been resting his hands on the center console, where the radio panels are. He had accidentally pushed the transmit button on the console, giving all 150 people on board a front row seat to his dialogue. He was mortified. Both pilots looked down the center aisle of the cabin and saw 300 eyeballs bulging out of people’s heads in disbelief. They had not left the gate yet, and had another four hours with these people. The captain performed an emotional Mea Culpa, hoping an offended passenger would not file a complaint.

Hotels offer a plethora of freebies that end up in the homes of pilots. There are soaps, shampoos, lotions, sewing kits, amenity kits, and other things of strategic value. On the nightstands in hotel rooms, there usually is a pad of stationary and a cheap pen. The stationary pads are commonly found in the cockpits, on the built in clipboards, but the pens are too valuable to leave behind. If there are free newspapers at the front desk, we are certain to take one. At some of the better hotels you can find a newspaper and a Wall Street Journal at the same time, major score.

There is the story of the pilot who finally sends his first child off to college. The young adult returns for the holidays and proceeds to tell the parents everything they have learned. The parents are told many things, but their child was most impressed by learning that most bars of soap are actually very big and shampoo comes in bottles that are bigger than their thumb. Being raised on hotel toiletries brought home by the student’s father, the young person was ignorant to this important part of life, only because the father, a pilot, was a cheap bastard.

Discounts and deals abound in the pilot world. Almost every airport eatery and hotel restaurant offers a percentage off of whatever we purchase to eat. There are coupons for free drinks or buffets. I have seen 50% off in some places, which none of us can pass up. I was at a coffee shop in a layover hotel recently, getting ready to head to the airport. The young woman working the counter got me my coffee and handed me two big chocolate chip cookies for free. Of course I shyly refused, but she insisted that I take the cookies. “You never know when you might get hungry”, She said. I was trying to smile and not drool at the same time. This treatment is not unusual. I was walking through the Cincinnati airport once, when a worker at the Mrs. Fields Cookies counter waved me over. “You can have all the left over cookies for five dollars”, the counter person said. I walked away with three bags of cookies and boasted about my good deal for weeks after. I had realized that the cookies kiosk was closing and instead of throwing the cookies away, they would offer them all at a price no pilot could refuse. I scored those bags of cookies several times but got so sick of them, that I eventually refused the good deal. The same thing happened in Buffalo New York one night. We were doing a turn around, so we were there for about an hour. I ran down to the cafeteria and ordered some wings. The man working the counter asked if I wanted extra wings. I said, “Sure, sounds good”. He brought out three large to go boxes of wings, mild, medium, and hot. We stuffed ourselves. When ordering a meal where the food is scooped up in a predetermined amount, the generous workers dishing out the food usually add a partial scoop more, smiling at us while they do it. I have never seen a pilot tell them to take it back.

There is a good chain of communication amongst pilots, allowing us to share the free things or good deals in our layover cities. A fellow pilot told me about free coffee at the hotel coffee shop in Boston. He said, “You have to be in uniform to get the free coffee”. I mentioned this to my copilot the evening we arrived at that hotel. The next morning I was in the lobby of the hotel studying the subway map. We had the entire day off and I was interested in visiting a museum. I was surprised to see the copilot walk by in his uniform, seven hours before we were to be picked up. He marched over to the coffee shop and picked up a free cup of coffee, saving himself about $2.50. “You make me proud”, I said. He smiled, held up the free cup of Joe in a salute, and then proceeded to pick up a newspaper someone left on a chair. He went back to his room, drank free coffee and read a free paper. It doesn’t get much better than that.

I worked the Hawaiian operation for several years. Our layover hotel was at a gargantuan hotel complex with three, forty story towers. Through the grapevine, I had found out that the rooftop of every tower had a hot tub on it with an ice chest of soda next to it. Access to the rooftop was limited to the expensive business rooms on the upper floors. This was by no means a deterrent to us pilots. I discovered that if I took the elevator as high as I could go without using a room key, I could then take the stairwell up the remaining floors, to the rooftop. I was not interested in the hot tub, but drinking a free soda and taking in the incredible view from forty stories up, was great. I spent many hours up there over those years and never saw another person on that roof. On my way down one day I decided to take the elevator from the highest floor. As I walked towards the elevator I saw a door open to what looked like a lounge. I walked into the room and realized this was a suite converted into the business club lounge.

The suite was gorgeous, fronting the ocean, filled with food, drinks, newspapers, and a self-serve bar. The best part of this situation was realizing that there were no hotel employees in the room. I was alone with platters of food, free drinks, and 24 hours off. I settled in like I owned the joint. I left two hours later, only when another hotel guest entered the room. I went back many times, but one day, when I walked in, I saw a woman sitting behind a desk. “Good afternoon sir, can I assist you?” she said. I wanted to say, “Yeah, can you just go away from this good deal I have?” I remained calm and said, “I am trying to find my boss, and I was told to meet him here.”

“Oh, no problem, what is his name, I can look him up and contact him.” she said.

I was digging myself into a hole. I politely refused her help and left quickly. I could tell she was eyeing me suspiciously. When I got to the elevators, I turned around to smile at her. Next to every elevator were a big bowl of tropical fruit and a stack of newspapers. In an act of defiance, I picked up a papaya, a mango, and a Wall Street Journal while smiling. The elevator arrived quickly and I left. I called the front desk and asked when the business lounge was staffed. I was told that at 4:30 every afternoon, the business lounge was staffed. I had my answer. From then on I made sure I never spent time in that room after 3:00.

I spread the word about the rooftop and lounge to my fellow pilots. One of my fellow pilots brought his wife with him on a trip to Honolulu. He convinced the wife to go to the rooftop with him and sit in the hot tub. It was a beautiful night and they ended up having sex, then more sex, then running around the rooftop naked. Just as they were getting back to putting their clothes on, a security team came out onto the roof. Both parties were surprised as hell to see each other. The pilot apologized to the security team as he was putting his clothes on, grabbed a couple of free sodas and left with his humiliated and unhappy wife.

There was a time when most airlines served good food, especially in first class. I am allowed to sit in first class when I travel off duty. The pass system at my company allows me to travel unlimited times a year. Some years ago a pilot told me that over the weekend he took his wife and children on a flight that was a round trip flight to another city. He flew out on the first leg enjoying a nice lunch and free drinks in first class. They were on the ground for an hour before the same aircraft with the pilot and his family still on it, returned to its point of origin. He and his family enjoyed a first class dinner on the way back, the children enjoying a few ice cream sundaes. That was how they spent their day and evening, enjoying free food, drinks, desserts, and movies. The monthly food bills were less than normal because the pilot was uncanny in his ability to be a cheap bastard.

Not that long ago I was riding to a hotel for a layover. Across the street from my hotel I saw a sign on the marquis of another hotel advertising free wireless Internet. My monthly schedule requests were due the next day and I needed Internet access to send my requests in. Instead of paying for the service in my hotel, I walked across the street that next morning to use the free Internet at the other hotel. I walked past the lobby and sat in a public area near a fireplace that had couches and coffee tables. As I was booting up my computer I saw a large urn of coffee across the room. “What the heck” I thought, it’s just a cup of coffee. I got up and fixed myself a large cup of coffee, just the way I like it. I was working on my computer with a solid Internet connection, drinking my coffee, when a hotel employee approached me. “Sir, the breakfast buffet is now open, would you like me to show you what we have this morning?” she said. Without the slightest hesitation, I said, “Why that would be great, thank you.”
I proceeded to make myself a waffle, gather a plate of eggs and bacon, a glass of juice, and a container of strawberry banana yogurt. I was still there three hours later when they closed down the breakfast area. I was asked if I would like anything else, so I asked if I could take a snack to go. I have shared this nugget with many of the pilots I fly with and they too have enjoyed a scrumptious morning buffet, across the street.

This story could go on and on as there are endless examples of pilots being cheap bastards, but there is one last example I would like to share with you.

About 16 years ago, I was an engineer on the Boeing 727. The captain brought a bag onboard at the beginning of our trip. He handed me the paper bag and told me to put it in a safe place. When we got to our destination that night, he asked me for the bag. During our four-day trip, each day would start out the same, he would hand me the bag, I would put it out of harms way, and he would ask for it at the end of the day. On the last day, as he handed me the bag, I heard the clinking of glass. “Be careful with that,” he said. I asked him what was in the bag. He told me there were about ten light bulbs in the bag. I asked him why he carried all of these light bulbs around. He said to me, “I take the burned out light bulbs from home and exchange them with the working light bulbs in our hotel rooms.” I was at a loss for words, but I remember thinking that this guy is one cheap bastard! I am honored to be carrying his torch, twenty years later.

Be Safe,

FlyGuy

Cadet Barf

2008-01-29T21:38:00.000-08:00

In the back of every passenger seat, on every aircraft I fly, there is a small bag that has one single purpose, to vomit in. I looked at one recently, and printed in six different languages, were the words, “comfort bag”. Countless unfortunate individuals have become acquainted with these little bags. They have no instructions printed on them. It is left to the individual and their specific situation, to determine the proper use of the bag. A few months ago I was catching a ride home with another carrier, soundly sleeping. During the descent of that flight I awoke to an awful smell and much commotion around me.

A young man sat down in the aisle seat next to me, his face ashen and his hands trembling. Behind me several people were getting up and moving as far away from him as possible. He had gotten sick in the row behind me. He did not use his little bag and had left a mess all over the seats and floor. It was obvious he had seen happier times. He looked over at me as if he was in trouble an apologized profusely. I told him that this happens all the time and showed him how to direct cool air to his face. I had a bottle of water with me and gave that to him as well. Soon, he felt better and I talked to him until we got to our arrival gate. He thanked me and said he was surprised that I stayed with him, as everyone else got as far away as possible. I told him I was used to it. What I did not tell him was how I had become immune to vomiting events. It is with great pleasure, after 25 years, I would like to share with you the story of Cadet Barf.

When I entered pilot training in the Air Force, my entire class was subjected to a myriad of training events, before flying a jet. We were told about the rigors of our training and what would be expected of us. There were grading standards in many areas and all would have to be passed satisfactorily, or we risked being eliminated from the program. We were also told that there was a time limit to the program as well. You could not keep trying to pass a part of the program over and over. At a certain point enough was enough and you were out. One of the reasons you could be eliminated was getting airsick. Like other events, you could get sick as a dog for a time, but if you could not get it under control, you were medically eliminated. The acrobatic and high G environment really played havoc with many trainees’ stomachs. It was the contention that getting airsick in combat was simply unacceptable and therefore your services were not needed. Another layer of stress was added to the already stressful training environment.

About six weeks after we started flying, we entered the acrobatic part of our training. We were taught to do several maneuvers in the high g force environment. This caused many of us to get sick inflight. In my class, one trainee was eliminated for airsickness. This of course, freaked us out more. Many of us were immune to airsickness and it was not a factor. It was a factor for FlyGuy and I struggled through several flying lessons trying to not vomit and fly my jet at the same time. I remember one flight where my instructor tried to get me sick. He had us all over the sky in a nonstop demonstration of every maneuver I had to learn and perform. We called these pilots, stick hogs, as they liked to do most of the flying and left little time for us, the students, to practice. “Are ya gonna puke?”, he yelled. “No sir, give me more of this shit, I love it!”, I would yell back louder, in one big lie. I started to sweat and felt nauseous. My concentration diminished as I felt my stomach flip flop and I started to drool, you know, that pre barf alarm clock that clangs the upchucking inevitable. “Show me another barrel roll.” He said. It was like being asked to disembowel myself. I was focusing on the maneuver when I regurgitated.

My greatest fear had come true. I don’t know how I did it, but I stopped the mass of vomit in my mouth. The training jets were unpressurized, this was one of the reasons we wore full face oxygen masks. You did not want to throw up in your oxygen mask. My teeth were acting like a lock on a canal and the locks were stuck closed. After completing the barrel roll, I was told to do more acrobatic maneuvers. Somewhere in this nightmare, I decided to swallow everything. I hope and pray that I never have to swallow something so foul, again. I did not throw up again on that flight but I feared a recurrence. I did not tell my instructor that I got sick as he would have had to log it in my grade book, and I did not want to give that stupid asshole the satisfaction of knowing he made me puke. I went to the bathroom and washed my mouth out for a while and cooled off. During my debrief, the instructor was kind and complimentary on my performance, and I avoided an airsickness write up in my grade book. There were a few instructors like this guy who were normal on the ground but turned into raging maniacs in the air. We students called them “flamers", as they screamed and yelled like they were on fire and you were the reason. Yeah, this guy was a flaming, stupid asshole, stick hog.

It took another three or four rides to not get sick during acrobatic flying. This was a huge relief to me. My classmates talked about their experiences getting airsick, many were much worse than mine. We always kept the little white sick sacks in our flight suit leg pockets. These were zippered pockets the length of our foreleg and about eight inches wide. This was the perfect size for full sick sacks. The key to vomiting success was to make sure that you got your little white bag out, then open the bag, get your oxygen mask off, and place your mouth into the barf bag. This was to ensure that you did not throw up all over yourself, the cockpit, and most importantly, your instructor. Timing in this matter was critical. There were plenty of sick sacks to go around as the instructors carried at least two. Once the sick sacks were full, it was imperative that you seal them off so as not to leak or break open. On more than one occasion a sick sack would break open while resting in the pant leg of a student pilot. There was one student who forgot his sick sacks and when he asked his instructor for a sick sack, he was told to throw up in his helmet bag. This was the flight bag we used to carry our helmet, checklist, and other items required for our flights. Nasty!

For a short time there were sick sack fights within my class. I am not sure how this demented fracas started. Someone realized that a full sick sack was a potent weapon. For about two weeks, flying sick sacks were regarded with abject terror amongst us students. Bloated, opened, sick sacks were placed in victims helmet bags, cars, and lockers. My first experience with this was during a debrief and hearing the words, “Jesus Christ, who fuckin did this!” Everyone turned to see one of the students holding a vomit covered hand over his helmet bag. Someone had dumped their sick sack into his helmet bag and he had reached into the bag to retrieve something and he came out with a hand full of vomit. I have rarely heard laughter that hard. The victims face turned crimson, he turned to the table next to him and flung the vomit off his hand into the faces of two other students. What happened next was a blur. Chairs flew back as everyone stood up, with most of us running for the door. Pushing, shoving, and bad words were coming from the vomit victim table. The instructors were ordering a stop to the melee and the rest of us were exiting the room. Things calmed down for the rest of that day but the vomit abuse continued, randomly, as sick sacks were filled. Under the cover of darkness, someone tossed a full sick sack onto the windshield of a car leaving the squadron parking lot one night. The driver of that car was the flaming, stupid asshole, stick hog. His car came to a screeching stop and he jumped out daring the tosser to identify himself, and if he did not identify himself, he would hunt him down. No one emerged from the shadows that evening, but later that year I found out the vomit tosser was another instructor pilot, who thought the guy was, well, a flaming, stupid asshole, stick hog. So it went for a couple of weeks, puke paranoia at an all time high. One of my classmates confided in me that he was a puke cheater. He filled sick sacks with yogurt from the snack bar, then used these vomit decoys as a defense against the real thing. I considered this a brilliant move and made myself two decoys. It is the sharing of such stupendous secrets like this, that make one a friend for life. The decoys worked great, but after a few days the decoys swelled from the biological processes in the yogurt. They looked like a bag of chips that are made in a factory at sea level, but are sold at a ski resort at 7,000 feet. We made new decoys and no one was the wiser. The next day our flight commander let it be known that the puke wars were over.

I became an instructor pilot after graduating from flight training. I returned to my base and was assigned to a training flight. Before I was allowed to take a student sortie, I was sent through a checkout program. I would fly with senior instructors and squadron leaders, who acted like students. I was supposed to treat them as if we were on a real training flight. I was excited to finally be in a real training squadron doing what I liked best. I showed up for my first checkout ride and was shocked to find flaming, stupid asshole, stick hog, waiting for me. “Great to have you back.” He said. We got our gear and headed out to the flight line. “Listen, I don’t feel that well today so I will let you do most of the flying.” He said. This was to be a contact flight with acrobatic and spin training.

As we entered our training area, I started to babble about my first maneuver, then demonstrated that maneuver. I then let him try it. I flew a series of maneuvers and was setting us up for a spin demonstration, when he dropped his mask, opened a sick sack and violently threw up. I acted as though I had not seen him get sick and forced my jet into the violent void of uncontrolled flight. This is a weird place to go as the aircraft loses all of its lift and starts to rotate around its central axis like a spinning top. If I remember correctly, the jet would rotate 360 degrees every three seconds, and drop about 700 feet with each turn. I would find out soon enough that this made many students sick. The intention of teaching this was to allow the student to get themselves out of this uncontrolled flight and get the jet flying again, a big confidence booster.

To get out of a spin, one has to force the jet into a cone of recovery and to get there requires an aggressive series of movements to the control surfaces. It is a violent maneuver to say the least and requires much altitude to recover in. I finished the spin recovery and asked my fake student to show me one. “Didn’t you see me drop my mask!” he yelled. I looked over and he had vomit all over him and the sidewall of the cockpit.
The centrifugal forces of the spin had sent the vomit flying to the side and away from me. This was due to the direction I chose to enter the spin as I did not want the vomit to come flying in my direction. It was a long time before I was so proud of myself again. In one moment I was able to pay back the dozens of students this flaming, stupid asshole, stick hog, had gotten sick. Because I was an instructor, he couldn’t do a thing to me and I told him he had to buy me a beer for throwing up in my jet.

During my years as an instructor, I flew with a few students who were in the process of being medically eliminated due to airsickness. They were told they had three extra rides to get it together or they were gone. Once they were assigned to you, they flew all three rides with the same instructor. I treated these poor men with kid gloves. I would talk to them all the way out to the training area, letting them know that I wanted them to succeed. I would tell them about my experience with airsickness and that they needed to relax and focus on one maneuver at a time. There were a few times that these students did get sick. While we were still sitting in our jet at the end of these fights, I would tell the student that there would be nothing in their grade book about getting sick, they needed to relax more, and when they got their wings they owed me a beer. Every one of those students completed the course and pinned on their wings. One of them flies commercially for the same company I fly for. I see him now and then and remind him he still owes me that beer. I opened sick sacks for many students and witnessed some gruesome vomiting, but no one came close to the infamous Cadet Barf.

A few times a year, the Air Force would fly in a plane load of ROTC cadets for orientation rides. These young adults were college students who were taking military courses that would lead to being commissioned as an officer in the Air Force. Most of them wanted to be pilots. Part of their program was to experience a flight in a real training jet. This gave them an idea of what they would be doing after graduating and it was an incentive to stay in the ROTC program. They would show up in groups of about fifty, usually early in the morning. They were given safety briefings and kept in a large classroom where they would wait for their flight. This was an all day affair and there was not much for them to do. Each squadron had a snack bar that served all kinds of things to eat. It was a self serve room where you could get or make things yourself and pay at a cash register operated by a student who was not flying. These ROTC cadets were told to be careful what they ate and to eat as little as possible. There were hot dogs, chili dogs, pizzas, burgers, sandwiches, ice cream bars, chips, candy bars, frozen breakfasts, nachos, sodas, and many other delicacies.

That day I was assigned three orientation flights with the visiting cadets. The cadets were enjoyable to fly with as they were happy to be there and excited about jet flying. I went to the classroom, found my first student and went out to fly. The flights lasted about thirty minutes. We would fly out to a training area and let the cadet try to fly a few simple maneuvers and we would demonstrate a few. On return to the base the cadet would be allowed to fly a bit more. That was it, quick and simple. At the end of the day, the cadets would be flown out to return home. My third and last flight was with a pleasant young man who was just finishing a chili dog. I noticed that he had a few ice cream sandwich wrappers, empty bags of chips, and soda cans in font of him on the table. “Did you eat all of that?” I asked. “Yes, sir, and two more hotdogs.” he said. “Was it the gas and go special?” I asked. “Yes, sir, but don’t worry about me sir, I can take whatever you give me, I’m immune to everything.” He said. The gas and go special was a good deal. You got two hotdogs, a can of chili, bag of chips, and a soda for two dollars. Cadet barf had consumed that and all the other stuff. Airsickness is an individual symptom and many people are not affected by it at all. I assumed he knew enough about his eating habits to know when to stop. He and I went out to the flight line, found our jet and took off. I suspected something was not right on our way out to the training area. I made a shallow turn after takeoff, where Cadet Barf grabbed the instrument panel in front of him and said, “Your a little aggressive there, aren’t you?” I told him this was normal flying and we really had not done anything wild yet. Cadet Barf remained silent. Upon reaching the area, I let him fly straight and then make a turn. I asked him if he wanted to see anything specific. He told me he wanted to see all the acrobatic “stuff. I flew for about three minutes showing him different maneuvers. After the demonstration, I asked him if he wanted to try a loop. My question was met with silence, I looked over at him and all vomit hell broke loose.

Cadet Barfs’ head jerked a few times and vomit came squirting out the sides of his oxygen mask. Not more than a second later another wave of vomit came out of his mask. I remember thinking that this kid was going to drown in his own puke if that mask did not drop off his face. “Take your oxygen mask off!” I said, but he just sat there jerking his head and gagging. The oxygen masks had microphones in them that were hot wired, which allowed us to talk to each other without having to push any buttons. This system worked well when you were not listening to someone gag.

I reached up and flipped open his sun and wind visors, then released one side of his oxygen mask, which swung open on one side. His face looked like a toddlers face after eating mashed ham, peas, and cereal for the first time. All the vomit in his mask fell onto his flight suit as he threw up onto the windscreen in front of him. I had never seen projectile vomit before, but there it was traveling straight out of his mouth to a point in space in front of him, which happened to be the windscreen. I pulled a sick sack out of my leg pocket, opened it and thrust it in front of his face. “Here use this!” I said. His hands were shaking as he grabbed the bag and filled it to the brim in an instant. I snapped another bag open, told him to give the full one to me, and take the empty one. He managed to do that and continued to fill the second bag up before I had tied the first one closed. I opened a third bag and exchange it for the full bag. He sat there with his mouth over the bag drooling, looking like he wanted to die. Meanwhile I was flying the jet, keeping myself oriented in the training area, closing and storing barf bags, and trying to help this poor bastard. I reached down to store the second full sick sack and when I looked back up, he had already filled the third bag. I gave him my fourth and last sick sack and told him to hang in there, we were going back to base. He just moaned and filled the last sick sack I had to the brim. What am I going to do now, I wondered. The only thing I could think to say was,”Take your gloves off and use those.” He fumbled with his gloves, pulled them off and filled them both up in less than a minute. By this time I had coordinated to depart my training area, and was heading back. The poor guy was holding both gloves in one hand. He was so sick that he had squeezed the contents out and onto himself. It took about 15 minutes to get back into the flight pattern. We would normally fly up the runway and pitch out in an aggressive manner, throw our gear and flaps down, and land. I asked for a straight in approach, the most gentle way of getting to the ground. Twice more, Cadet Barf vomited on the way back. As I lined up on final and got my gear down I surveyed the damage. I will never forget that horrible scene. It looked like someone had used cans of vomit spray and liberally sprayed Cadet Barf, the windscreen, most of the instrument panel, the floor beneath Cadet Barf, the upper canopy, the side wall, the throttle quadrant, and parts of my left side and leg. To complete the mission Cadet Barf vomited one more time after we landed and I noticed that the last part was a dry heave. I wondered if he was now empty of all the food he had eaten earlier in the day.

When we finished any flight, a crew chief was waiting for us in the parking area. We would taxi in perpendicular to our crew chief and make a sharp 90 degree turn as we came abeam him or her. These jets could turn on a dime and we liked to be precise for our crew chiefs. They were overworked, underpaid, and always happy to help us. They were young, maybe 19 to 20 something, full of energy. As we made our turn in, the crew chief would look at the instructor for a thumbs up or thumbs down sign. Thumbs up meant the jet was good to go for another flight, thumbs down meant something was not right or had to be fixed. I made the turn that day and from thirty feet away the crew chief got a puzzled look on his face. I stuck my hand out with a thumbs down, but the crew chief never saw it. At about that time he realized what it was he was looking at all over the windshield. He started jumping and cussing, shaking his fists and stomping the ground. I stopped the jet, shutdown and started the process of getting out of the cockpit. Poor Cadet Barf was so sick and disoriented, he needed help getting out. The crew chief was very upset and said to me, “Holy shit sir, what did you do, shoot him with a shotgun!” Normally any student who got sick in a cockpit was responsible for cleaning up their own mess. The crew chiefs would give them a bucket of water and some rags. In this case however, the cadets were not required to do their own cleanup. It would not have mattered anyway as Cadet Barf was barely capable of walking in a straight line, let alone focusing on cleaning up lots and lots of vomit. I told the crew chief that the cadet was going to have to wear that vomit covered flight suit until he got back home many hours from now, and that would be punishment enough. I also told him I would help him clean up the jet. This was a shock to him, I could tell. I said, “Come on, lets’ get to work.” I sent Cadet Barf into the squadron and told him I would debrief him shortly. That cockpit looked like someone had butchered small mammals in it. The crew chief kept gagging as we cleaned it all up. “Sir, how do you not get sick doing this?” he said. It was a defining moment for me, one that I have always remembered. I had become immune to the sights, sounds, and smells of vomit.

Going back into the squadron was like running a gauntlet of grief. My first stop as always was the parachute shop, to drop off my gear. The senior technician who oversaw the parachute shop saw me and waved me over. The chief master sergeant was pointing to a parachute and said, “How the hell do you puke on the BACK of a parachute sir?” He was holding Cadet Barfs’ parachute, pointing to a large amount of vomit. “This is going to have to be repacked!” he yelled. “Sorry chief.” Was all I could say. I left the parachute shop and entered the squadron to find Cadet Barf. I found him in the briefing room, at a table in a corner, alone. He stood up at attention as I approached and I told him to sit. He was apologizing profusely, when I held my hand up. I told him what he did was not normal, but I was quite sure that no human being would do such a thing to themselves on purpose. I made him promise me that he would not let this deter his quest to become a military pilot. I told him of my bout with airsickness and the many students that I had seen deal with it and get through the program. I told him to go to the bathroom and wait for me. I was close to one of the squadron supply clerks, who I went to for a favor. I went to the bathroom and Cadet Barf was there waiting for me. “Get out of that awful thing and put this on.” I said. I handed him a brand new flight suit, still in its’ plastic wrapping. “Just throw the one your wearing away and meet me back in the briefing room.” I said. Cadet Barf came back into the room, where I finished my debriefing. It was late and the leaders of the cadets were starting to round them up to leave. I could tell he wanted to talk more, but it was not to be. I dismissed him, he stood and gave me a salute, turned and left.

Years later, halfway around the world, I found myself flying an airlift mission for a global training exercise. We had the day off and some of us went to the local strip of clubs and bars lining a beautiful beach. We hung out at a joint with a thatched roof that only served ice cold beer, had sand for a floor, had no walls, and faced open ocean. The bar slowly filled up and soon we were elbow to elbow with other military members from around the world. I had one of the few precious bar stools facing the bartender and the Indian Ocean. I’m not sure what number beer I was on, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to find a tall, handsome young man smiling at me. He shook my shoulders and said, “I did it. I got through pilot training and I’m flying Hercs out of Yokota! Remember me, I’m the guy that puked all over you!” “Oh Yeah, I remember.” I said. There was Cadet Barf, years older, and with much more confidence standing in front of me. I bought him a cold beer on the condition that he wouldn’t throw it all up on me. We talked for a while. He told me that the experience he had that day, as bad as it was, helped him fight harder to get his wings. What was amazing to me, was that he never got airsick in pilot training, not once! I asked him to explain that to me. “Hell man, I took it all out on you, in one day.” He said with a laugh. Yes, he did.

Be Safe, FlyGuy

You can listen to this story (soon to be posted) at my good buddy Joe's podcasting site at, http://joepodcaster.libsyn.com/

FlyGuy Returns

2008-01-07T16:54:00.000-08:00

Hello and Happy New Year everyone! It has been a while since I posted and I have received a few requests to start writing again. I have been busy getting the permits to rebuild my house that burned down this past summer and helping my girlfriend with her terminal father who just passed away.

It seems odd that at the same time, I was trying to bring life back to a destroyed home and was helping a good man leave this life. His name was John and he led a full and fast life. He was lucky to have a loving and compassionate daughter who was with him as he took his last breath. We should all be fortunate enough to go that way.

I have been flying for over two decades and with that passage of time a few of my fellow aviators have died doing what they loved most, flying. I was young and inexperienced when the first pilot died. He was a student pilot flying solo and lost control of his jet in one of the local training areas. There was Frank who flew into the ground, at night, in an F-16. Dave was on a training flight in a C-130 on a sunny day, when at low level, gusty winds took part of the wing off.... they never had a chance. Mitch was flying an F-4 that got too low on a low level flight. There are others and time has diminished the shock of hearing these tragic stories.

There is a poem that is often read at a pilots' memorial. It was written by an American pilot flying the Supermarine Spitfire in England, at the beginning of WW II . It was during a test flight up to 30,000 feet in a new Spitfire 5 that the inspiration came to him and he wrote this poem. Like my fellow aviators above, he too died doing what he loved most. He was 19 years old. The poem is called "High Flight".

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of- wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue

I've topped the wind swept heights with easy grace

Where never lark, or ever eagle flew-

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high untrespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

No 412 Squadron, RCAF

Killed 11 December, 1941

Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Who Has The Gun?

2007-09-27T13:14:00.000-07:00

When the world powers decide to meet it is always a huge deal. I flew a trip this weekend that went from the west coast to JFK. As I approached the gate agent at my departure gate, I noticed a lot of young, healthy, looking men that pretty much looked the same, standing near the gate agent. I was introduced to a secret service agent who showed me his identification badge, then told me he was with another 14 secret service agents, all carrying weapons. They were on their way to support a larger force at the United Nations meetings in New York City. Standing next to him were two Federal Air Marshals who were working my flight. I had a total of 17 guns on my flight. I felt very secure! It is not unusual to have a few law enforcement agents on board who are armed in the line of duty. I have seen agents from Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Departments of the Interior, Treasury, Education, IRS, Naval Investigation, Post Office, Sheriff, Highway Patrol, Various Police Departments, and numerous others.

As the captain, it is my responsibility to know who is armed and where they are sitting. If there is more than one armed agent on board, then they all need to know who the other person or persons are that are armed as well and where they are sitting. We pilots can now be trained to carry weapons as well. I remember a flight once out of Miami, when I approached the gate noticing a striking, tall woman, who was wearing a leopard skin body suit. This thing was made out of spandex and could only be worn by someone who had the guts to wear it and the body to fit it. She obviously had both. The poor gate agent was a young man who was drooling like Pavlov’s dog, was beat red in the face, and was stammering on every word. I was introduced to the woman and was told she was a deputy form the Dade County Sheriffs Office. I checked her I.D. and welcomed her. I told her she could board with me and she did. As we were walking down the jet way I asked her if she had any bags. She did not. I stopped, looked at her and said, “O.K., where the heck do you carry your gun?” She smiled and said, “Captain, if I tell you, I have to kill you.” “That’s fair.” I said. I did not say another word and neither did she.

After an uneventful flight we went to our hotel in Manhattan. The copilot and I went out for the evening and on our return found many streets completely blocked off to vehicle and foot traffic. They were the expensive hotels near Park Avenue and the U.N. It was obvious the security was being increased for the many Heads of State and their entourages. As we left Manhattan the next day for JFK we noticed a high level of security along our route. While taxing out that afternoon we saw several aircraft from other countries that are their version of Air Force 1. We also saw a high speed convoy using a perimeter road to get around the normal airport traffic to go directly to an aircraft. I was able to get a picture of a convoy of dignitaries and the Republic of Angola’s aircraft. Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Seattles' Sky

2007-08-31T14:57:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest cities in the world is Seattle. Always a good layover. If you like good beer and seafood it is even better. Flew in under partly cloudy skies and clear air. I usually walk down to Pikes Place Market. The place is always a beehive of activity during the day and dead as a door nail at night. One shop called Piroshki Piroshki, is across from the market area and they make some mean baked goods. Plenty of places for good chowder but I am partial to the chowder at Ivar's. The Brooklyn restaurant is unique. They have great plank salmon and you can mix different shellfish with different beers or wine. The new baseball stadium is fantastic but tickets sell out fast. For all of us working stiffs out there, Happy Labor Day. Be safe, FlyGuy

Prisoners and Transplants

2007-08-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

On the previous post I told you about my home in Lake Tahoe, California burning to the ground. I took the month of July off to start the rebuilding process and I am now back in the saddle working the remains of the busy summer flying. If any of you have traveled this summer you know how insane it has been, packed airplanes, terminals, taxiways, and jet routes. The hurricane season is back blowing its affects on the Pacific and Caribbean waters. Now matter what happens out there, my job like thousands of other pilots in the left seat is the same, flying countless numbers of people in the safest manner possible. That in itself is fairly mundane and repetitive as it should be. In the middle of this day to day routine the odd things show up at any time.

On my first trip back I saw two things I want to share with you. While taxiing out to takeoff in North Carolina I saw a large group of people around an unmarked white Boeing 737. This is not that unusual for charter operations. A large corporation might fly hundreds of its employees to a vacation destination or military charters fly to anywhere in the world. What got my attention on this one particular group of people was that they were all dressed alike and seemed to look similar. I then noticed that they were all handcuffed and being escorted up the stairs into the jet. It was a large group of prisoners or illegal aliens being taken someplace far away. On scheduled passenger flights it is possible to have an escorted prisoner onboard. You would most probably never notice this as the prisoner and escort are always boarded first and placed in the last row of seats. The prisoner is handcuffed but they usually have a small jacket over their hands that make it look like the person is simply walking with their hands in front of them. The prisoner and escort leave their seats after all other passengers have left the airplane. For the minute possibility of having to evacuate an airplane quickly due to an emergency, a prisoner/passenger is not allowed to have their ankles cuffed to their seat.

On this same flight I did the exterior preflight before we left. As I worked my way around the jet I saw a human organ container on the ground waiting to be loaded into the cargo bay. Human organs for transplant are carried everyday on commercial airliners all over the world. Human eyes are the only organs that can be carried in the cockpit. Eyes come in a standard sized box about a foot square. Occasionally you receive a time sensitive human organ shipment and are given a special call sign that gives you priority handling on the ground and in the sky. When I was a young copilot I was given a box of eyes by an agent. I took them to the cockpit and asked the captain, “What do I do with these?” He said, “Strap em into the jump seat, we can always use an extra set of eyes to look for traffic.” It’s good to be back. Be Safe, FlyGuy.

"Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there." Francis Scott Key, 1814

2007-07-03T09:54:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, June 30^th, at the bottom of Angora ridge in South Lake Tahoe California, a fire started that raged out of control for days. The conflagration consumed over 200 homes and buildings. Over 35 years ago, FlyGuy along with his father and brother built a small cabin in that forest. By Sunday night the fire storm had laid waste to the structure and more importantly, the beautiful forest. One week later I drove my 85 year old father up to the property expecting complete and utter devastation. We brought documentation to prove we had a home in the affected area, allowing us to get past the security checkpoint. As we drove closer to our home it became obvious what we would find. The Red Cross had set up aid stations along the main road. A Red Cross volunteer flagged us down and asked us if we needed anything. He suggested we take a rake and shovel with us to sift through the debris for possessions. They gave us that and more and we proceeded up the hill driving by home after home, not one was standing. I stopped the car just around the corner from our property and told my father I wanted to tell him something.

My father is a clean freak, a genuine maid in a man. I have known for decades that to keep up with him is impossible and no matter what I did, the cabin would end up way below his standard. I would use the place, he would show up after that and I would get the usual phone call. I explained to my daughters at an early age, that grandpa just did things differently and that I considered what he was doing was like trying to sweep all the dust off of the moon. I was explaining this to them because one of my daughters had just asked me, “Dad, why does grandpa always sweep the street?” “Because that is what grandpa does”, I said. He would sweep the driveway into the street and he would continue for reasons he was never able to explain. I am lucky as my father is one of my best friends. There I was looking at him in the car last Saturday, telling him I had something I had to get off my chest. “What is it”, he said. I said, “Dad the last time I was up here I left dishes in the sink.” “I knew it!” he said. Then he started to laugh and I drove around the corner.

I pulled into the end of the driveway and we were all silent as we looked at what was once our home, the one we built with our own hands. To my utter amazement, there in front of me, nailed to a large cedar tree was our house number sign, intact. Years ago my father had cut a piece of cedar and bought some metal numbers, then put the whole thing together. It was a street number sign for our house that was visible from the street as the house sat back on the property. When he hung the sign, he put a small American flag at the corner of it. Out of all the devastation, the sign and the flag, our flag, survived. The picture above is the sign as it was found by me. The back of the sign was scorched black. That moment in time when I realized what it was I was looking at, will stay with me forever. Amazingly not one person perished in the blaze and there were only minor injuries to a few firefighters. We have insurance, we will rebuild and the wonderful memories will pass on to the next generation and the one after that.

THE FOLLOWING STORY IS DEDICATED TO THE FIREFIGHTERS, REDCROSS VOLUNTEERS, LAWENFORECEMENT PROFESSIONALS, POWER COMPANY EMPLOYEES, AND THE COUNTLESS CHURCHES, BUSINESSES, AND VOLUNTEERS. THEY ARE THE STARS IN OUR FLAG AND THE ANGELS THAT WAVE THE RED, WHITE, AND BLUE.

One of my most memorable flight experiences was one fourth of July that I was working. I am a big fireworks fan, just ask my children. Every year FlyGuy makes a trek to the local fireworks stand and buys whatever we need. Next we find an empty field out in the country, set up all of our explosives and wait for darkness.

This one summer I had to work on the 4^th and it was killing me. The last flight of the day was from Salt Lake City to Dallas. I was thinking to myself that it was going to get dark just after takeoff and there are no major cities at all between here and there. I thought there was no chance of seeing any fireworks that night. You can easily see fireworks from altitude and they look pretty cool. You’re looking down on them and that is a different perspective than looking up at them.

If you draw a straight line between Salt Lake and Dallas you can see that you fly over a lot of nothing. The Uinta mountains followed by the high plateaus of western Colorado, Great Sand Dunes national monument, the Sangre de Christo mountains, then the High Plains. Flight visibility was excellent that night, at least 100 miles. Looking out of the windscreen gave us a sweeping view of about 200 miles. Just as twilight arrived I witnessed an incredible thing.

Off to our right I saw a flash of light. I looked in that direction and realized that a fireworks show had just started in some little town, village, or reservation, that was not on any map I had. I was looking at the fireworks show when the captain said, “There are more over here”. Sure enough in some unknown little out of the way place, another tiny community started a fireworks show. Then in front of us, 20 miles away from the show on my side, more fireworks started going off. Then 20 miles south of that and 15 miles east of that, other towns tucked away in obscurity celebrated with rockets of their own, all at the same time. As we sailed along at 500 miles an hour we witnessed the tiniest parts of America lighting the sky below for 200 miles around us with red, green, purple, blue, white, silver, and gold. We could even see those smiley face displays. At any one time we could see 4 to 6 fireworks shows. North, east, or south, the colors came to us at 180,000 miles per second as we sat in silence not quite believing what we were seeing. This went on for about 30 minutes until we flew over the continental divide. The High Plains is a real no mans land, yet even there we saw a few glittering displays.

Soon it was time to start our descent and checklists. It was an unremarkable descent, arrival, and landing. I would rather have been at home, earthbound with my family. That flight is one I will always treasure. It is something I wish everyone who appreciates the fourth could see. Be Safe, FlyGuy.

TAXI TO THE ACCIDENT

2007-06-05T10:03:00.001-07:00

The most common aircraft collision is with an object on the ground, going at very slow taxi speeds. I can’t tell you how many accident reports I read that involve an aircraft and a fuel truck, or baggage cart, or catering truck, or lavatory service truck, or deicing truck, or building, or anything else that moves or can’t move around an airport. Rarely does this occur when pilots are taxiing their aircraft. These accidents most often involve a person driving a vehicle into an airplane. Pilots’ taxiing the last 100 feet into a gate is where many of these incidents occur. We rely on the hand signals from our ground personnel marshalling us into our parking spot. The marshaller uses standard hand signals, procedure, and experience to guide us in. From the cockpits we cannot see our wings and therefore what our wings may hit. We watch closely to make sure all vehicles are outside of a painted clear zone and our wing walkers have their thumbs up to indicate wings clear. I have seen wing walkers staring at their shoes with their thumbs up not paying attention at all to my aircraft. Although we have a very good feel for what is happening outside we still need the other eyes of safety on the ground. When you taxi into a gate area there is a considerable amount of activity going on. Baggage carts are zipping along every which way to get passenger bags to an aircraft as soon as possible. FlyGuy makes a point of bumming a ride from these drivers a couple of times a year. I just go down the jetway stairs and walk out to the traffic lanes being careful to not get run over. I wait for a tug to drive by and stick out my thumb as though I am trying to hitch hike. I have had100% luck having a tug driver stop, the first one, always. Hitch hiking pilots are not a common occurrence and curiosity is a great human condition. “I need a ride over to the employee cafeteria.” I said one crisp winter afternoon at JFK. My jet was a concourse over from the cafeteria and the walk is not a short one. The copilot that day decided to race me to the cafeteria on foot. We stepped into the Jetway, counted to three and he bolted up towards the Jetway exit. I ran down the stairs onto the ramp and jogged out to the driving lanes behind my jet, noticing immediately that it was bitterly cold. There wasn’t a vehicle in sight. I looked over to the jet parked next to me and saw a beehive of activity. I started to run over to it when a tug came careening out from under the terminal. I didn’t know where this driver was going but it looked like it was to a fire. “Please turn in my direction, please”, I thought. He turned toward me accelerating. I turned my body towards him and stuck my thumb out. After a momentary look of confusion, the driver slammed on the brakes and came to a jarring stop just past me. He was looking over his shoulder to me, smiling. He was my man! I ran over, told him that I was in a race trying to beat the copilot to the employee cafeteria. “Jump in captain”, he said. I was not quite in my seat when he mashed the accelerator to the floor. In seconds cold, cold wind was going through my jacket, shirt, and first layer of skin. My eyes were watering like I had just found out my daughter was out of college and employed. Through my tears I saw other tugs go by in a blur in the opposite direction, mere inches from us. The driver veered around a jet that was being pushed back, never taking his foot off the pedal. Then I saw a 757 taxiing by and heard one engine being shutdown. I had never heard that before. To save gas we always try to shut an engine down after landing after the engine has cooled down. It was weird hearing something I always do but can’t hear if from the flight deck. The driver bobbed and weaved around numerous obstacles, then came to a stop as a heavy jet was taxiing out. Loud is the only word I can use here and I had my earplugs in. He plowed through deep puddles of icy slush, rounded the corner of the next terminal and came to a stop in front of the door I needed. He told me he would wait and as I ran into the building and the cafeteria, the driver yelled something to me. I ran back to hear what he had said. “The calzones, the calzones are good!” he said, giving me the thumbs up sign. I ran in and discovered I had beaten the copilot.

It was a meatball calzone that I got and man was it good. The copilot came in about 4 minutes after me, realized he was beaten and said bad words. I convinced him to drive back with us. The driver drove just as fast back to our jet. At one point I looked at the copilot and he just shook his head with a “what the heck have you gotten me into” look. If you look hard enough around airports you can see where buildings, doors, guard rails, and many, many other things have been hit by a vehicle. Vehicles hit vehicles all the time. These collisions occasionally result in deadly consequences. FlyGuy was a boy scout in his early days and had a scoutmaster who worked for an airline on the ramp. About ten years ago during a pushback at night, he took a simple misstep and got run over by the nose wheel. He lost his leg below the knee and was lucky to be alive. A horrific accident happened years ago at night on the ramp of a major airport. A tug driver was cutting across the ramp when he noticed another tug coming head on to him driving erratically. He veered to avoid a collision and as he passed the tug he realized the driver was missing his head. The poor man had driven by an airplane that had its propellers still spinning. Last year at Boston’s Logan airport a ground worker was killed after getting hit by a snowplow clearing taxiways. While flying big cargo jets in the military there seemed to always be a report about some poor sap that taxied into something they should not have. We would fly all over the world and land at airports or military bases we were not familiar with. Taxi with extreme caution was the rule. I cannot tell you the number of times some person on the ground in a remote spot of the world, who had no knowledge of my airplane, tried to get me to taxi into a spot where I would have gotten stuck or I would have hit something. We would send our flight engineers out of the jet and have them on 200 foot extension cords to a headset. This allowed us to have some eyes on the ground that knew what they were doing. During the Gulf War of 1991 we were given a mission that was time critical to say the least. We were at an airbase in Germany with a raging blizzard in progress. Once we left the parking area with its stadium type of lights, we could not see the taxiway signs to determine where we were. The airbase was shutdown to all traffic but our mission priority was such that we needed to get out of there. We could only see a small part of the taxiway directly under the nose. Two engineers went out, one on a headset and the other to help find the taxiway signs. We could not have gotten out to the runway without their help. This was a great example of what working as a crew can do. It was a very eerie night and we never saw the people outside, just heard their voices and the extension cord going out into a white curtain. The controllers knew where we were only because we could tell them. Modern airports now have ground radar and can see you in any weather. We eventually got out to the runway, got the engineers on board and talked about how to take off. We could only see the tip of a centerline stripe on the ground only if you leaned forward and put your head over the instrument panel. We decided that the pilot taking off (not me that night) would look outside only and try to stay centered on the runway and I would stay inside and look only at the instruments, giving the flying pilot verbal information such as speed, altitude, engine settings, etc. We ran the engines up to full power and released the brakes. Acceleration was slow as we were heavy as hell. I started calling out the numbers and glanced over to the other pilot. I took one look at this face and never looked at him again. We slowly increased our speed, rotated the nose and the pilot lost contact with the ground instantly. We were still accelerating with the main gear on the ground looking at a white wall. The pilot transitioned to instruments, held his pitch and we felt the main gear leave the ground. I crosschecked our altitude and vertical velocity seeing they were both increasing and raised the gear. The tower controller asked us if we were airborne, we acknowledged and continued on with the mission. A few hours later we delivered our cargo to some very thankful people. The most expensive thing to hit is an airplane and it is also expensive for an airplane to taxi into an object. When I was parked at JFK a few weeks ago I pulled up to a gate and noticed a big indentation on the exterior of the terminal in front of me. I think it is where a 747 did not stop in time and creased the thin metal plating of the wall. I took a picture of the impact site and posted it above. What do you think? Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Pop Goes The Window

2007-04-13T07:12:00.000-07:00

During this last trip I had an unusual experience with a windshield on a Boeing 757. There we were minding our own business at Fl 390 when we heard a loud bang, the copilot jumped, and his outside window screen shattered into numerous pieces. This all happened at once and in the blink of an eye. BANG! Then a seriously damaged window. The windows on airliners are sturdy beasts able to withstand great abuse. They are engineered in two separate layers, one on top of the other. They are coated with a material that is similar to tough plastic. The two layers give added strength and a backup window under the exterior layer. The plastic layer keeps the shattered window together in what looks like a cool glass puzzle, keeping the window in place but in many pieces. The exterior layer is also heated to make the window more pliable in the event of impacting an object. What kind of object? I was flying a military cargo jet once low to the ground at about 200 miles and hour, at night. The lights in the cockpit were low, none of us were talking, just concentrating on what we were doing, when out of nowhere a tremendous “BANG!” scared the hell out of us. “What was that!” someone yelled. The jet we were flying was huge, had four engines and more systems than a skyscraper. There were two pilots flying, two more pilots sitting in back, and two flight engineers. Everyone started talking at once, well actually yelling at once. We were all checking the engine instruments, hydraulics, pneumatics, flight controls, and anything else to pinpoint the mechanical disaster we were sure was alluding us. Nothing, not a single abnormality could be found and we were all dumbfounded. The right seat pilot said, “I think there is something on my window.” A flashlight was shone on the window and there appeared to be something clouding up his window, right in the middle and about a foot square. In the dark of night we could not see that well. We continued on and had maintenance personnel meet us when we landed. After about 10 minutes of checking out the jet a maintenance supervisor said to all of us pilots in a thick southern drawl, “Sirs, it appears as though you hit a duck.” Then he held up a feather and said, “Mallard be my guess.” Someone said, “You’re shittin me!” “No sir.” He said. The only thing left of that poor bird was a smear of duck goo and that one feather, but the window was fine, not a scratch on it. I read an accident report about a military cargo plane that took off and ran into a flock of over 200 large birds in thick fog. They lost two engines, sustained damage to numerous flight controls, but had intact widows the entire time. They could barely see through all the guts and feathers on the windows. If I remember correctly the crew received some type of safety award for bringing that bird back in one piece. To test the strength of aircraft windows, engineers have developed a canon that fires a chicken into a jets canopy or window. They can get these dead birds moving at over 500mph. I have seen high speed videos of this modern version of a catapult and it is impressive to see the windows flex and bounce back as the chicken turns to liquid. The Myth Busters did a show on this; the video is at “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHfejwdrMVQ.” There is a story floating around about a canopy prototype for a jet fighter being destroyed when the chicken was fired into it. Another canopy was brought in for testing and once again it failed. The engineers were baffled and could not understand why the canopies were not withstanding the canon firings. A young and inexperienced technician humbly brought it to the attention of the engineers that maybe the chickens they were using should be defrosted and not frozen. The next test was a resounding success.

Our problem on this recent flight had its origins not in hitting an object, but in the electrical components of the window. I have yet to hear about a bird that can fly at 39,000 feet. No, I knew right away that the window was either defective or overheated, with overheated being my first choice. I had witnessed this a few times in the military. The window appears fine one second, and then cracked into a hundred pieces the next. The heating elements at the top of the window were burned and melted. This was most probably an electrical short that started the failure. We ran the checklist for a broken window. The window heat switch for that window was turned off. This isolates the window from the electrical system. With the inner ply intact, we continued on to our destination. The pictures above are the copilot’s window, my window and his window (what a difference), a close up of a burned heating element, a normal looking heating element, and the window heat switches. We sent our maintenance coordination center a message informing them of our situation. The message from the center read, “ recvd your msg. should be ok to continue.” The copilot wrote back, “riiiiiiiigghhtt, then why does the captain refuse to switch seats with me.” To which he received a reply, “because the captain is smart.” I couldn’t have agreed more. Be safe FlyGuy.

Crossing The Sierra Nevada

2007-04-05T17:50:00.000-07:00

These are a series of photos taken from about 80 miles east of Yosemite National Park, flying west at 34000 feet. The photos are 80 miles out, 40 miles out, 20 miles out with Mono Lake, directly over the Sierras, and a photo of Yosemite Valley. I would have flown this leg for free. Be Safe, FlyGuy

Career Day

2007-03-16T07:19:00.000-07:00

FlyGuy had the honor of being invited to the annual “Career Days” events at the local middle schools. I have been participating in this for the past six years or so and enjoy it more and more every year. These bright and talented young people range in age from 12 to 15, the 7^th, 8^th, and 9^th graders. I am highly impressed with the adults who show up to interact with the students. A plethora of careers including doctors, veterinarians, college professors, scientists, business owners, bankers, bakers, nurses, law enforcement, state workers, firefighters, EMTs, salesman, lawyers, restaurateurs, and of course, one pilot. I always let the students know at the outset of my talk that I am here for them, they are not here for me. I encourage them to ask questions anytime they want. I start my talk by telling them how lucky they are to be living in these times, that they will probably live to be 100, and in that case they may as well enjoy the remaining 90 years or so that they have left. I tell them how much I enjoy going to work and how much I enjoy being home. If you have to work you may as well be happy in some career that you enjoy rather than being miserable in one you don’t. What is in store for their future I have no idea I tell them. It has only been 100 years that airplanes have been around so I have no clue what airplanes and aviation will be like when they are my age.

As I ramble on to the students about what they would have to do to be a commercial pilot and what that life is like, the questions start rolling in. I do offer an incentive for good questions, that being full size candy bars. The first one of those I throw to a student, the hands go flying up. I make it clear that asking me if I like my shoes or how often I see my dentist, does not count as a good question. I get asked all kinds of things due to the wide age spread. The questions are good ones and sometimes I really have to think about the answer. The following are some of the unusual questions I have gotten and my answers to them.

1. Have you ever shot someone? FlyGuy: “Not that I know of.”

2. If you could shoot someone, would you? FlyGuy: “Only my ex wife’s husband if he wanted to give her back.”

3. If I have to pass a drug test how long do drugs stay in my body? FlyGuy: “You should be asking yourself why you have to ask that question in the first place. If you take drugs, you most likely will get caught. The tests are getting better and better improving the odds against you every day. People, please stay away from drugs. If you are taking drugs go see your counselor, clergyman, relative, trusted friend, and most importantly your parents. Get help in any way you can, please.” Don’t blow your chances to get your dream career and ruin your life.”

4. What is the most scared you have ever been? FlyGuy: “The day my daughters became teenagers.”

5. Have you ever crashed and killed people? FlyGuy: “Not yet.”

6. How come you don’t carry a gun? FlyGuy: “I am as untalented as you can get with a gun. I would end up killing my copilot instead of the bad guys.”

7. Is it true that you can get sucked through the little hole a bullet makes in the airplane? FlyGuy: “No, sorry, just makes a loud and boring whistling noise.” I don’t think I have ever seen anything Hollywood has made about flying that is accurate.

8. Have you ever done loops in the air? FlyGuy: “No, the passengers get really upset when you do that.”

9. Are there any hot guys who are pilots or are they all old guys like you?

This was a tough one. I wrote a phone number on the board, turned around, and walked right up to the girl in the front row who asked the question. I put my hands on my hips, looked right into her eyes, handed her my cell phone and said, “Call that number on the board and ask the woman answering the phone if I am hot. If she says no, I will shave my head, wear a pink thong in public for a week, and buy all the junk food you can eat for a year, give you the keys to my car, pay for your insurance as well, get you the newest cell phone, and take you shopping for new clothes.” She stared at me, not blinking or moving. “That is a totally unfair answer”, she said. The phone number was my girlfriends and the student was her daughter. Be Safe, FlyGuy.

FLY ME TO THE MOON

2007-03-07T10:12:00.000-08:00

Some of the best stories I can tell you, I hear from other aircrew members. I was in a crew van in Mexico City this past week enroute to our hotel with my copilot and 5 flight attendants. I was listening to a flight attendant relate to us an incident that he was a part of recently. FlyGuy was not a witness to this event, but I have no reason not to believe it. The flight attendant was working a flight in the first class cabin. He immediately recognized Lance Armstrong, the seven time winner of the Tour de France, entering the first class cabin. Another flight attendant was working with him and he informed her that Lance Armstrong was in seat 3B and would she like to bring him his drink. She became very excited and said, “Do you think it would be OK for me to ask him what it was like walking on the moon”? It was of course Neil Armstrong who was the first human to step onto the moons surface on July 20^th, 1969. Lance Armstrong was born two years later in 1971. Well, the flight attendant telling this story then said to the other flight attendant, “Sure, I don’t think he would mind at all”. The flight attendant walked up to Lance Armstrong and said, “Sir it is an honor to have you on board today. If you don’t mind me asking, what was it like walking on the moon”? Lance Armstrong looked at her and said, “I ride bikes”. To which she replied, “You rode a bike on the moon”? Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Ice, Ice, Baby!

2007-02-22T17:07:00.000-08:00

I had the unique experience of flying into and out of JFK after last week’s ice storm, and witnessing the aftermath. Carumba! Many of you have probably heard about Jet Blue’s operational woes during this time. I am not a Jet Blue employee and I am unfamiliar with their operational policies. I do know some of their pilots and FlyGuy has total respect for the Jet Blue pilots’ professionalism and skill. I really felt sorry for what they must have been going through with passenger frustration and rage at the maximum limit. We pilots are always along for the same ride you are, except we are ultimately responsible for your safety and comfort. When the managers of an airline operation make mistakes, we along with you suffer. The entire airport at JFK was a mess. I landed there on Friday night under clear skies with a temperature of 25 degrees. The ice that had formed on Wednesday was still there, frozen solid, and days away from melting. The runways had been scraped clear and deiced along with some of the taxiways. There were many turnoffs, taxiways, and intersections that had not been cleared and were impassable to any aircraft. I had to be very careful as to what surface I chose to taxi on and all movement on that surface, especially the turns. As we taxied back after one landing we saw a Boeing 747 taking off on the runway we just landed on. We were on a taxiway next to the runway. The 747s’ jet blast was throwing chunks of ice the size of a newspaper 50 feet into the air along with ice crystals, water, and snow. The icy mist engulfed the entire jet until the nose lifted off. A person standing by the runway would have been shredded by the fast flying pieces of sharp ice. The mist lingered in the air and slowly settled. As we approached our ramp area where there are about 15 gates, I was surprised by what I saw. The entire surface was a solid sheet of ice. It had a milky white sheen to it. There were two big jets in the ramp area slowly maneuvering to their respective gates. We were cleared in and I taxied very slowly, maybe 2 miles an hour. I kept both engines running as I was unsure as to how much power I would need to make my final turn to the gate. As I started to make my turn a large plow drove into my path. I was not moving very fast and I stopped immediately. The plow had a scraping blade about 15 feet long on its front. It was lowered to the ground and scraping absolutely nothing off the surface of the ice. The copilot said, “What’s he doing, polishing the ice”? I completed my turn and stopped on the red guidance light. After we shut the engines down I noticed a ground crew at the next gate working around the wheels of a jet. They were trying to free the tires that were frozen to the ground! They had been working for 3 hours just trying to get it free enough to move it. Apparently this was a problem all around the airport. Ground vehicles suffered the same fate. The tugs used to push the jets back had huge snow chains on all 4 tires. At my company alone there were delays all through the weekend, many of them hours long. The photos I have attached tell it all. Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Saint Elmos Fire

2007-02-13T16:59:00.000-08:00

One of the oddest events you can observe in flight is Saint Elmo’s fire. The phenomenon occurs when the atmosphere becomes charged and an electrical potential strong enough to cause a discharge is created between an object and the air around it. The amount of electricity involved is not great enough to be dangerous. Check out this video of Saint Elmo’s Fire taken by a pilot in Iraq at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sA-Hk_jnPg&eurl=. This is very typical of what it looks like. Sometimes you can see a shaft of plasma form in front of the nose. I have been told by other pilots that they have seen a ball of undulating plasma spinning just off the nose of their aircraft. Earlier in the year I was flying a redeye to the east coast. During the cruise portion of our flight we started to encounter Saint Elmo's fire. Frying pan size electrostatic spider webs started to move across our front windows. It was a fair amount of Saint Elmo’s fire. I called the lead flight attendant and asked if he had ever seen Saint Elmo’s fire. He said he had not and would like to come up to see it. Once in the flight deck he was shocked to see so much electrical discharge and even more shocked that it was moving all over the windows. After about 5 minutes he had seen enough and left. We then got a call from the cabin and it was another flight attendant who wanted to see the Saint Elmo’s fire. She came into the flight deck and was also surprised at what she saw. To observe it better she squatted down to about half her height. After a couple of minutes she asked me what exactly is Saint Elmo’s fire. I turned to look at her about two feet away and started to give her an answer. I looked as serious as I could and as I did so I placed my hand on the window. Although Saint Elmo’s fire looks impressive, you cannot feel it in any way. As I was explaining to her what it was she was seeing a large discharge occurred on the window my hand was on. Just as it went across where my hand was I screamed and shook violently as though I was being electrocuted. She screamed a mighty scream as she thought the pilot was being electrocuted, fell backwards, and hit her head against the cockpit door. The copilot started laughing and I followed him. She realized I had tricked her and she started laughing as well. She left the flight deck and we continued on. The Saint Elmo’s fire died away and we cruised into clear skies. It might be a while before I see Saint Elmo’s fire again but this last time I will remember for a long time. Be Safe, FlyGuy

That was way too easy!

2007-02-02T09:24:00.000-08:00

Sometimes we get to fly the painless trip. That is when nothing goes wrong and everything else happens so easily and simply. I picked up a two day trip, one leg LAX to JFK, 24 hours off, and one leg back. Easy! The leg out was a redeye. We taxied out of our alley to see a clear path to the takeoff runway. Nobody was in front of us. We had just leveled off when we were asked if we wanted to go direct somewhere down the road. I had noticed in the dispatchers’ remarks in my flight plan that the winds were favorable for “directs”. We accepted and were given a direct to a point about 150 miles east of JFK, about 2000 miles. Sweet! Taking advantage of the tailwinds we arrived about 45 minutes early. After we taxied in and shut down the engines I looked at my copilot and said, “That was too easy”. We came back 24 hours later to good weather, a jet that was ready to go with cargo and fuel on board, a friendly gate agent, and all the paper work ready. The passengers were boarded and we pushed back early. We were told to expect to takeoff at a runway intersection directly in front of us and that we were number one. We actually had to wait 45 seconds for our engines to warm up the required minimum amount of time. We were scheduled for 50 minutes of taxi time and we only used 8. We flew back to LAX at 38000 feet with mostly clear skies. Our route took us north through New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Albuquerque centers airspace. We arrived 40 minutes early in LAX. At the gate in LAX, I told the copilot he must be charmed because I never have things go that well. What was different about this flight is that from New York to the western part of the Grand Canyon there was a continuous layer of snow covering the ground for as far as we could see. Were talking 1500 miles or more of just snow. The picture here was taken at 38000 feet north of Lincoln Nebraska, heading west. I do not think I have ever seen that much continuous snow, ever. Be Safe, FlyGuy

Happy New Year

2007-01-23T22:46:00.000-08:00

There is nothing quite like a great sunset.  Last night I was over Grand Rapids at 36,000 feet taking in a real winner.  We were flying directly to the west in smooth air, flying from JFK to Los Angeles.  The sunset stretched almost 180 degrees in front of me.  The horizon was bright yellow with layers of lighter yellow above that.  Sitting on top of the lightest yellow layer was a sky so light blue it would be hard to describe.  The sky above that takes on a flattened dome shape filled in with increasingly darker blue at the top.  There at the top of that blue dome the sky fades to gray and then black.  As the sun drops lower behind the horizon the yellows turn to orange and the oranges turn to red.  The planet Venus rose early out of the sunset, rising below a quarter moon, the only objects in the sky.  Because we are flying into the west, this light show is drawn out longer than if you were standing on the ground.  We are literally chasing the sunset.  Slowly the blacks and grays fall towards the horizon, chasing the blue that chases the red.  Like every other night, the tendrils of black always win.

I have been busy not being busy with time off and not much flying at the end of the year.  My first trip of the New Year was an interesting one.  I was preparing to fly to Las Vegas, programming the navigation computers when the lead flight attendant handed me a letter from one of our passengers.  It was a type written letter so I knew this person had written the letter before they left for the airport.  It was written by a man named Bert.  Bert was traveling to Las Vegas with his mother, sister, and girlfriend.  Bert had arranged to be married at the Flamingo two days later in what sounded like a very elaborate and expensive wedding.  Bert’s problem was that he had not asked his girlfriend to marry him yet.  Bert’s girlfriends name is Connie.  Bert wrote that he was pretty sure Connie was suspecting something, probably to be asked to get married in Vegas.  Bert wanted to know if I would make an announcement of some kind in flight and ask Connie if she would marry Bert.  Bert was sure she would never expect that.  I talked to the lead flight attendant about this and we both agreed it could really backfire on Bert if he let another man ask Connie to marry him.  Bert needed to ask Connie himself but I could certainly get him to that point.  We quickly came up with a plan and a cryptic message was sent to Bert that I would do all I could for him.

About an hour into the flight the lead flight attendant called me and told me that now would be a good time for my announcement.  I got on the public address system, greeted the passengers, and informed them of our arrival time and the weather in Las Vegas.  These were not my exact words, but I then said, “Ladies and gentleman I would like you now to turn your attention to the rear of the aircraft.  Those of you in last ten rows or so please look forward.  There is a man standing up in the aisle and his name is Bert.  Sitting next to Bert is his girlfriend Connie.  Connie, Bert has decided to make a huge and lifelong change to his life.  Connie, Bert wants you to be the biggest part of that change and he has something important to ask you.  Bert, the rest is up to you my friend, good luck, flight deck out”. The flight attendant was on the interphone the entire time so I knew what was going on in the cabin.  At that point Bert got on his knees and asked Connie to marry him.  She said yes and the entire cabin erupted in yells, screams, and clapping.  I bought them drinks and we proceeded to Las Vegas, arriving under clear skies.  I shook their hands on the way out.  You just never know what you will get when you fly to Vegas.  Be Safe and Happy New Year, FlyGuy.

2006-12-10T07:26:00.000-08:00

Taken enroute to Mexico City, these pictures are of New Orleans and the Mississippi river. Click on the picture of the city and it will enlarge. You can clearly see the Superdome in the downtown area. The picture of the Mississippi is the end of the line where it literally flows into the Gulf of Mexico. The French Quarter is to the right of the downtown area. Notice that the Mississippi river bends there and it is the closest it gets to Lake Pontchartrain. The French fur trappers set up a settlement there as it was the easiest and shortest place along the river to portage between the two.

JFK and Manhattan Skyline

2006-12-06T08:21:00.000-08:00

This is a shot of JFK, looking north. You can see the skyline of Manhattan in the background.

Ejection Seat Training

2006-11-12T02:01:00.000-08:00

I saw an Air Force buddy of mine this past week and we talked about our days in pilot training in the panhandle of Texas.  We were laughing about an incident that happened during our ejection seat/parachute training to one of our fellow student pilots and I want to tell you that story.

Before we ever got to the controls of a jet trainer, we had about six weeks of ground school.  We learned about jet aircraft systems, weather, trained in simulators, we were taught flying techniques, and more and then more.  One day we showed up at a facility called life support.  It was here we were to learn many things including how to survive being ejected from the jet at high altitudes and airspeeds.  The more I learned the more I realized that such a maneuver was a bad deal all the way around for me or any other pilot.  We watched videos of ejection seats with dummies in them being blown out of cockpits and then videos of real ejections caught on film.  There was a device in one of the hangers that we used for ejection seat training.  It was a seat from a cockpit attached to railings that went straight up.  They would charge a pressure bottle under the seat and once you were strapped in you would go through the ejection sequence.  It ended with you shooting up the railing as if you were ejecting, even made a loud boom.  Great ride!  Some ejection seats had rockets on them that would propel you away from the aircraft.  The trainer I was going to be flying had one of the oldest ejection seat systems ever made.  It was basically a huge shotgun shell that shot you out of the jet a fraction of a second after the canopy.  If the canopy failed to come off, the seat with me in it would go through the canopy.  This was the first thing I heard that made me feel a little uneasy about this ejection thing.  The newer ejection seats were so good that you could be sitting on the ground completely stopped and eject straight up on a rocket, separate from your seat, have the parachute fully deploy and get one swing in it before you hit the ground.  You might break a hip but you would be alive to talk about ejecting for the rest of your life.  The old ejection seat on my jet required a minimum speed of 100 knots in level flight and flying 100 feet above the ground.  When I heard this I imagined being in my jet and it was on fire, I was panicking trying to eject and remembering all these parameters for safe ejection at the same time.  Riiiiiigggghhhhht.  This was the second time I questioned this ejection thing.  I put it out of my mind as we started to train for a parachute drop.  The training did not involve jumping out of a plane with a parachute on like you see in the movies.  Modern ejection seats do their thing so quickly that human involvement is nonexistent until you realize you made it out of the jet and your hanging in the air in your chute.  Were talking a couple of seconds here with rapid deceleration, wind blast, noise, tumbling, etc.  Every person I have ever talked to who ejected from a jet remembers nothing of the event until they were swinging in their harness looking at their jet falling to the ground.  There was also the common sense pilot belief that we would never leave a perfectly functioning airplane.  Our training was done out on the prairie by paragliding up to about 600 feet and then freefalling to the ground.  The instructors had a large truck with the tether in the back on a large spool.  This was attached to a parachute harness that had one of us in it.  You would start out standing up with a couple of your buddies holding the sides of the parachute open to catch some wind.  The truck was about 200 feet out in front of us.  The person doing the paragliding had a helmet on with a radio on the inside, allowing us to hear our instructors on our way up and down.  On the signal of the instructor next to us we would all start running as the truck started to move.  Within 30 yards we were running through the air and climbing as the tether was let out.  At 600 feet we released the tether and started our descent with our headset blaring helpful hints until impact.  At the end of any successful or unsuccessful parachute jump is the inevitable contact with the earth.  Whether it is dirt, sand, snow, water, mud, trees or rocks, you had to do your best to land so as to minimize your pain and suffering.  We were taught that if we ejected at a high altitude the shock of a parachute opening up would turn flesh and bone into pulp.  The solution to this was to freefall down to about 18000 feet where at terminal velocity you would survive the opening shock and then enjoy a 3 1/2 mile ride to the ground, saving the best part for last.  They even incorporated a small oxygen bottle into the harness so you would have something to breath on the way down to 18000 feet.  To prepare us for the impact with the ground, we practiced jumping off of a 10 foot platform into gravel and using the techniques taught to us.  We all caught on quickly and actually enjoyed it.  We were strung up on a pole and taught how to get ourselves down as though we were stuck in a tree.  I remember one guy cut the wrong cords and fell so hard his knee hit him in the face.  We all laughed at that.  The day finally came when we got to paraglide.  We were all looking forward to it.  It was early February in the panhandle of Texas.  The morning was cold at about 28 degrees.  They took us to some land that was so flat it could have been a mold for plate glass.  Not a shrub or blade of grass as far as the eye could see.  The ground had a thick coat of frost on it and my boots made a squeaking noise as I walked on the frost.  I was wearing the winter flight jacket I had been issued but it was not enough for the cold weather that day.  I jumped up and down to keep moving and that is when I realized the ground was as hard as concrete and I was going to have to land on it shortly.  I started to take in the rest of the environment and my excitement turned to fear.  Parked close by was an ambulance, its motor running and a thick cloud of condensation pouring out of its exhaust. The air was still and cold.  With no air movement and no heat rising up from the ground, it dawned on me that we were going to be dropping like rocks from 600 feet.  As I realized that there was not one bird in sight I heard the instructor ask for a volunteer to go first.  I stepped back from the crowd.

We all know that in every group of people that work together there is the consummate “pain in the ass” that seems to annoy everyone but themselves.  We had one in our pilot training class.  I will give him the name “Hatchet”.  Hatchet could walk into a room and within seconds piss people off.  Now I seemed to get along with Hatchet just fine, he annoyed me most of the time but I knew he meant no harm.  He was also infatuated with my wife’s breasts.  Hatchet was a short man.  His eyes were perfectly level with my wife’s chest.  When Hatchet would talk to her he was unable to look anywhere else.  She hated the guy.  Hatchet was also a cheapskate.  He was one of the bachelors and I would always hear them gripe about him skipping out on bills from the bars they would haunt.  I don’t know if Hatchet had anything to do with it but all 3 roommates he had in pilot training did not make it through the program.

There I was ducking behind my fellow pilot trainees hoping to heaven I wasn’t chosen to go first that frigid February morning.  No sooner had that thought come to my mind when I heard Hatchet yell, “Me, me, me, I wanna go first, I deserve it after freezing my ass off here!”  Hatchet’s plan was to get it over with then go sit in the warm bus that had brought us out to the site.  A smart plan actually.  The instructor called him up and he proceeded to get into his harness.  Shortly all was set and Hatchet started to run with some others helping him get into the air.  After a short run Hatchet was airborne and we all heard him yell, “Yippee!”  He shot up to 600 feet and we saw the tether fall away.  Hatchet dropped like a sack of potatoes, straight down in a slow rotation.  The instructor said, “Oh crap!”Then started running to where he was going to come down.  We all started running as well.  About halfway to him, Hatchet hit the ground so hard he bounced back up about a foot before crumpling to the ground with the parachute completely covering him.  The first people there took the parachute off of him.  The rest of us formed a circle around him, waiting for something to happen. Hatchet was not moving.   His helmet was still on with the blue visor down over his face.  The instructor knelt down next to him and moved his blue visor up to see his face.  His eyes were closed and I could not tell if he was breathing.  Someone yelled, “Hatchet can you hear me!”  Hatchet opened his eyes and looking straight up at no one yelled, “Fuck That Hurt!”  What started after that was a mixed bag of laughter and obscenities all directed at Hatchet.  We all walked away and when Hatchet realized that nobody was going to help him, he got up and called us all a bunch of assholes.  From that day on Hatchet took on the nickname “ground pounder”.  Ground pounder is the name all pilots give to anyone else who is not a pilot.  We pound the sky and everyone else pounds the ground.  Hatchet took it in stride and steadfastly remained a pain in the ass till the day we put on our wings.  Oh by the way, we were all able to paraglide that day.  I kept ducking to the end of the line and by 9:00 a.m. the sun had warmed things up a bit, the frost was gone and the air a bit warmer.  Watching the ground come up at me happened faster that I would have thought but my landing was not too bad.  I got up and was able to walk away.  We never needed the ambulance that morning and we all eventually got back on the bus and headed back to the base.  Hatchet slept all the way back, snoring the entire time.  Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Final Approach Montego Bay

2006-11-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

This is a shot of the approach to the international airport in Jamaica. The runway is across the bay straight off the nose.

The Boy The Coin and The Lie

2006-10-31T23:25:00.000-08:00

There is one thing about my job that is hard and will always be hard.  With families and jobs spread out all over the country, we often see unaccompanied minors traveling to a mother, or father, or other family members.  I have witnessed the results of gut wrenching separation as these children have to leave someone they love.  Sometimes these children are so upset they cannot be calmed.  Often when this happens they are sent to the flight deck to hang out with the pilots.

A while back I was saying my goodbyes to passengers when the flight attendant next to me asked if I wanted a coin he was holding in his hand.  It was a medallion really, with the logo of the Oakland Raiders on one side and the insignia of a military unit on the other.  He said some soldier coming home from Iraq gave it to him as he left the airplane the week before.  The soldier simply said, “I don’t need this anymore.” Then he handed it to the flight attendant.  I took the coin, put it in my flight kit and forgot about it.

Months later I was programming the flight deck computers when I heard a child crying and an adult voice saying, “let’s go talk to the pilots.”  I turned and saw a boy about 9 years old crying uncontrollably.  He had just left his mother and he would not see her for three months.  He was devastated.  He did not want to listen to anybody so I let him sit there and cry.  He was escorted to his seat which was the aisle seat closest to the flight deck; I could see him about 10 feet behind me.  Three or four adults seated next to him kept trying to console him which was fruitless.  I called the lead flight attendant up and asked her to tell everyone to just leave him alone.

I was digging around in my flight bag to get a baseball like card of our airplane to give to him when I saw that coin I was given months earlier.  I grabbed the coin and went back to the boy.  I knelt down next to him and got close enough to him so that only he could hear me talking.  I held the coin out and told him I was giving it to him.  I then proceeded to lie.  I told him that the coin was given to me by a soldier who had been fighting the war in Iraq.  I told him that this was no ordinary coin as it seemed to have magical power.  A football player gave the coin to the soldier as a good luck charm to keep the soldier safe.  When the soldier stepped off the plane back home he gave it to me and said he didn’t need it anymore.  The soldier told me that when he was scared or upset he would squeeze the coin real hard in his hand and close his eyes and think about something good.  The charm always worked like magic.  I told the boy that maybe; just maybe if he held the charm and closed his eyes, maybe he would not feel as bad as he did.  All I got was the shake of his head.

I went back to my seat and finished up our preflight checks.  Our final paper work came and as the flight deck door was being closed I saw that the boy had his eyes closed and his hand was squeezing the coin so hard it was trembling.  The door slammed shut and I went to work.

When we got to our destination and we opened the door, there he was, smiling and waving at me.  These unaccompanied minors are the last to leave the aircraft as they are escorted by one of the flight attendants to the waiting parent or responsible adult.  I waved to him to come forward.  He came up and I had him sit in my seat and started showing him the bells and whistles that all kids love.  I asked him if he had any questions.  He launched into nonstop conversation and we eventually told him we had to leave.  I asked him if the coin helped and he gave me the thumbs up sign.  I told him that one day, just like the soldier he would not need it anymore and when that happened, he should pass it on to someone else who may need it.  He stared at the coin, put it in his pocket, looked at me, and said, “I will.”  He was escorted away.  I will never see him again but I think of him whenever I see those sad faces.  I lied to him and I wonder if I did that to make me feel better in the face of his anguish.  I will probably sit on that one for a while.  There are things we all see that make us turn our heads away.  When it comes to the children traveling alone and afraid on my airplane, I like to look them in the eye and let them know there is nothing that I won’t do for them.  Be safe, FlyGuy.

Formation Flying

2006-10-10T21:24:00.000-07:00

When FlyGuy was learning how to fly the military way, I eventually came to that part of jet training called formation flying.  Formation flying is when you put two or more jets into the sky at the same time and you all fly very close to each other, like 3 feet wing tip to wing tip.  We all looked forward to this part of our training and studied hard before we ever flew any of it.  We would study all aspects of formation flying including what we looked at on the other airplane to stay in the correct position.  The lead airplane would fly all the maneuvers and we would stay in position on them the entire time.  Straight and level, high G turns, loops, upside down, whatever lead did, we did 3 feet away.  It was high pressure, intense, and scary as hell.  My first formation sortie was scheduled on a crisp spring morning.  I saw my name up on the schedule board and went to get my briefing from my instructor.  There at the table, smoking a cigarette was a Jordanian exchange pilot.  His name was major Fanatseh.  Exchange pilots are common throughout the military.  Our allies would send some of their pilots here and we would send some of ours there.  I had seen the major walking the halls of the squadron, smiling, and calling everything “bitchin” as that was a popular saying back then.  This was the first time I had spoken to him.  Major Fanatseh was friendly from the start.  He told me he was trained as a fighter pilot and had been flying for ten years, he had a family living with him here, and I reminded him of his cousin.  The major briefed me on our sortie and we proceeded out to the parachute shop to get our gear and walk out to the flight line.  At this point in my training operating the jet was no big deal.  We got the jet started and taxied out to meet our partner jet for takeoff.  The major took the controls and followed the lead jet onto the runway for takeoff.  There we were lined up on the runway slightly to the right and behind the lead jet.  We used hand signals to communicate with each other, that is how close we were.  We got the signal to run our engines up, then the signal to release our brakes.  We accelerated quickly, the major staying in position as though the two jets were welded together.  The nose of lead came up off the ground and so did ours.  Major Fanatseh magically matched every movement of our leader.  He raised the gear and flaps and accelerated to cruise speed in position.  I was waiting for him to explain to me what I should be looking at, etc.  The instructor pilots were very good at explaining things to you six different ways until you got it.  The major was silent, not uttering a single word.  I was trying to remember the tips and techniques from my training guide but there was a lot going on and we really depended on our instructors for the real hands on stuff.  Text books and pictures only get you so far.

I was sitting there concentrating on what he was doing when with no warning he let go of the controls and said, “Lieutenant, phhht, phhht, fly the jet”.  At that exact moment in time I felt my sphincter and bladder loosen, and my eyeballs bulging out of their sockets.
I grabbed the controls and instantly pitched us up 10 feet with the lead jet mostly disappearing, I over corrected and dropped 20 feet barely missing leads wingtip, now I was looking up at lead, completely under leads jet and desperately trying not to pitch up into them.  All of this is happening at 300 knots by the way.  I tried to move out from under lead and all I did was make his belly look bigger.  I pushed over so hard I banged my head against the canopy.  That really hurt as my neck was arched back looking straight up at them.  The negative Gs caused everything on the floor of the jet like dust, screws lost during maintenance, paper clips, and an old checklist to fly around the cockpit confusing me even more.  I was absolutely sure that in any moment we were all going to be falling flaming debris raining down on the flat plains of Texas.  I was looking at the rivets on the bottom of a jet and did not know how to fix that.  I tried to move out from under lead again and this time I did.  I ended up not 3 feet but about 300 feet away.  I started moving back and realized I was moving into lead too quickly.  What was a jet about the size of my hand was now as big as an SUV and getting bigger.  All of this I have described to you took place in less than 15 seconds, yeah it seemed like forever.  Just when I was sure all hope was lost I heard Fanatseh say, “I have the jet!” and I felt the controls grasped from my sweating and knotted hands.  As quick as you can snap your fingers the major had our jet in position and motionless against lead.  “How the f*c* does he do that?”   I thought.  No sooner than we were in position the major said to me, “Phhht Phhht, fly the jet” and he let go of the controls again.  I flailed just as badly the second time as I did the first; the only difference was that my sphincter tightened this time.  And what was up the “Phhht Phhht” thing?  Once again I thought my life was going end when the major said, “I have the jet!” and snapped back the controls, maneuvering us into the perfect position.  And so it went for about half an hour, the major would utter those same words that started out with Phhht Phhht, and I knew what was coming.  I asked him more than once to tell me what to do and all I was told was, “Fly the jet!”  Soon it was our turn to be lead and that was no big deal as the other guy was now flailing off of me. I was smiling behind my oxygen mask watching my fellow student pilot doing what I had been doing, trying to kill all of us.  The major was flying so all I had to do was watch.  I looked down at the instruments for a second, and when I looked up I saw the other jet was sideways to us and moving towards us, fast.  If I could have crapped I would have but my sphincter was slammed shut and welded closed, god in heaven this was the end for sure.  As quickly as these thoughts were filling my miserable mind, the jet stopped, leveled and dropped into position like a perfectly thrown pass into the end zone.  It was obvious who was flying that jet!  Major Fanatseh was laughing, he yelled at me, “You see, he is not flying the jet!”    As we left the area I felt like I had failed the ride completely and would never be able to fly formation, therefore never get my wings.

During the debrief which only lasted about 30 seconds, Major Fanatseh pulled out a cigarette, lit it, took a long drag on it, blew the smoke out slowly, and said, “Ok, remember always to fly the jet.”  He then got up from the table, I stood and saluted him and he left.  I gathered up all the courage I could and walked to the door of my flight commander’s office.  I knocked on his door and I heard him say, “Enter.”  I walked up to his desk and as I did so I saw two other instructor pilots in the room as well.  I saluted my flight commander and said something like, “Sir, requesting to discuss my last training flight.”  He nodded his head and I said, “Sir, it is my belief that at the hands of major Fanatseh it is a 50-50 chance that I will survive another training flight with him, that my young bride would be devastated and my mother would hound the Air Force until she was laid to rest.  I knew it was risky doing what I was doing but it was my butt I was talking about.  There was silence for a few seconds, and then all three of them started laughing.  I don’t mean a giggle or a ha-ha, I mean on the floor holding their guts laughing, for a while.  FlyGuy was very confused.  After they stopped laughing and wiped the tears from their eyes, I was told that I had been set up to fly with the major.  “We had to send him out with somebody and we chose you because you’re a good stick”, my commander said.  Well that did make me feel a bit better but I still was not happy.  One of the instructors said, “Don’t worry lieutenant; you’ll get your training.”  They were right.  The next time I flew my instructor was one of the best.  He showed me all of the techniques I need to know, the stuff no book can show you.  By the end of the second sortie I was holding my own staying close enough to not kill us and not so far away that I was being badgered to move in closer.  A few lessons later and I was hanging in position while doing high G turns, breaking off and rejoining with lead moving into the right spot and coming to a stop.  I LOVED IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eventually I got my wings and my first flying job was as an instructor pilot, teaching the trainees everything I had learned the year before.  I was checked out at Randolph AFB in San Antonio (great city) Texas.  I instructed for three years.  Whenever it came to teaching formation flying for the first time to a student I would always do the same thing.  We would take off with me flying and talking the whole time.  I could see the students squirm and clench their fists as we were uncomfortably close for them as this was all new and scary.  We would get to our training area and when we were in position, I would simply say, “Phhht Phhht, fly the jet” and let go of the controls.  The reaction was the same every time as the panicked and frightened students grabbed the controls and tossed us all over the sky, sometimes screaming in panic.  I would take control after a few seconds trying desperately not to laugh.  I would put us back into position and say, “OK lets try it this way, look at the helmet of the instructor, notice it is aligned with the chevron on the fuselage, also the flap hinge is at the angle where the rotating beacon cannot be seen, if you keep these two references aligned you are horizontally in position, now let’s talk about the vertical……………………” and so it would go until the student got it right.  The end of the formation program was when you took your student out in a two ship flight, the student flying solo in one and me with another instructor or student in the other ship.  Wow, were those some interesting flights!  Those student pilots including me came back from those flights with a higher level of confidence than any other part of the program would give them.  Young and inexperienced but they all had a taste of knowing what it was like to have the right stuff.  Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Meteor Crater

2006-10-08T06:58:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of the meteor crater in northern Arizona. About 50,000 years ago moving at 40,000 miles an hour, a meteor about 150 feet across weighing several hundred thousand tons, smashed into the desert floor. The explosive force has been estimated to be greater than 20 million tons of TNT. Traveling at supersonic speed, this impact generated immensely powerful shock waves in the meteorite, the rock and the surrounding atmosphere. In the air, shock waves swept across the level plain devastating all in the meteor's path for a radius of several miles. In the ground, as the meteorite penetrated the rocky plain, pressures rose to over twenty million pounds per square inch, and both iron and rock experienced limited vaporization and extensive melting. Beyond the affected region, an enormous volume of rock underwent complete fragmentation and ejection. The result of these violent conditions was the excavation of a giant bowl shaped cavity. In less than a few seconds, a crater was carved into this once flat rocky plain. During its formation, over 175 million tons of limestone and sandstone were abruptly thrown out to form a continuous blanket of debris surrounding the crater for a distance of over a mile. Large blocks of limestone, the size of small houses were heaved onto the rim. Flat lying beds of rock in the crater walls were overturned in fractions of a second and uplifted permanently 150 feet. As a result of the impact, the crater floor was 700 feet deep; it is now approximately 550. The crater is over 4,000 feet across and 2.4 miles in circumference. You can see this thing from 75 miles away at 35000 feet.

Fast forward 50,000 years to the present day, where man in his great wisdom has built beautiful cities, tackled the physical universe and conquered the skies. The meteor crater has been seen by thousands of travelers on the ground and in the sky. I often point it out to my passengers. I heard a story about a flight crew who was passing by this crater and the pilots told the passengers to look out one side of the airplane to see the crater. A curious flight attendant wanted to see the crater from the flight deck with its 180 degree view. Upon entering the cockpit the pilots showed her the crater as they were just flying by it. She stared at the crater and asked, “What are those little white squares down there?” The captain told her that they were buildings. The flight attendant in a surprised voice said, “No way are those buildings!” The pilot told her that indeed they were buildings as he had visited the crater one time. “There is a museum, an observation deck, and a snack bar along with other buildings”, the pilot said. The flight attendant was still very disbelieving, so much so that she turned to the other pilot and asked if the captain was telling the truth. The copilot said, “Yes he is, if you look closer you can see the road to the crater that comes off the interstate and look at the size of that parking lot down there. That was the location for the movie Starman; there are people and buildings all over that place.” The flight attendant said, “So you’re telling me that all those white squares down there right next to the crater are buildings and there are people in them!” “Yes!” both pilots replied. The flight attendant stared at the crater for several seconds as it went out of sight. She looked at the pilots and said, “They were so lucky!”

I cannot tell you if this is a true story or a flying urban legend, all I know is that I get a laugh every time I think about it. Be safe, FlyGuy

The Hardest Landing Ever Made

2006-09-23T19:40:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, September 2nd, I had the honor of making the hardest landing I have ever had.  There has not been a landing that has come close to that one in my 26 years of flying jets.  It all started out that morning when we showed up at JFK and saw white caps on the waves out in the bay, where normally it is calm water.  When we taxied out and were waiting in line for takeoff, we had a ball watching our fellow pilots landing on the parallel runway.  The winds were horrific, our airspeed indicators were reading 35 to 40 miles and hour and we were stopped with our parking brakes set.  The crosswinds were at the limits for landing and the pilots were working hard to get their machines on the ground.  Most of them were flying angled into the wind until they were within a few hundred feet or less above the ground, then they would use their rudder to align the nose with the runway and dig a wing into the wind to hold it in place until landing.  Easier said than done.  “Did you see that”, my copilot yelled as a 747 rocked its left wing below the comfort zone.  They landed seconds later and pretty hard at that.  One after another they kept coming, rocking back and forth, noses swinging to align, tires giving up rubber in large puffs of smoke, reversers screaming and throwing huge amounts of water up and over the wings.  “Glad we won’t come back to this”, I said to the copilot.  We were witnessing the remnants of a hurricane and the cyclonic energy still within it.  The storm was moving fast and we were getting back into JFK in about 8 hours.  The storm system was predicted to have moved north by that time.  I was very wrong.

Upon our return we hit turbulence as soon as we entered the clouds.  The poor passengers would have been more comfortable in a paint can getting shaken at the local hardware store.  We were vectored for a precision instrument approach to runway 4 Right.  We broke out of the weather 500 feet above the ground.  As soon as we were below the weather I immediately noticed the runway was not where it should have been, which was somewhat in front of me.  The autopilot had angled into the wind to keep the airplanes track aligned with the runway which was about 35 degrees off to my left.  All I could say was “Oh man, this is gonna be ugly.”  The copilot was silent.  I started concentrating on the conditions, runway, winds, airspeed, descent rate, my ships configuration.  As we were going through 300 feet our windshear warning system came on with visual (red and yellow windshear lights) and aural (a computer generated man’s voice yelling WINDSHEAR!) warnings.  I had been watching the airspeed fluctuate about ten knots and I had added 20 knots to my final approach speed.  I was now seeing airspeed 20 knots less than it should have been.  I immediately executed a standard windshear escape procedure, which is slamming the throttles to the full forward position, disconnecting the autoflight systems and manually raising the nose 15 degrees or more nose high.  You maintain this watching your airspeed so you don’t stall; until you are satisfied you have escaped from the windshear. To the passengers in back it is not a fun experience unless you are the type who loves the scariest rides at Magic Mountain or jumping out of an airplane holding on to the person who actually has the parachute on.  From nose down 4 degrees to nose up 15 or so makes an instant pitch up of 20 degrees with the engines going from a low power state to way more power than you would feel during a takeoff.   Both of us were pretty busy during the escape as I was concentrating on flying and the copilot was busy calling out critical speed and altitude numbers. The tower controller saw us go around and wanted to know what was going on.  “Tell him to standby”, I said.  Once we were sure we had escaped the copilot made the radio call telling the tower why we went around.  Once they knew it was due to windshear they stopped all approaches to that runway.  We leveled off and started getting ourselves ready for another approach to a parallel runway.  I made a public address to the passengers and told them we had to go around as I determined it was unsafe to land in the winds at that time, we were coming back around for another approach to another runway, and I would have them safely on the ground in fifteen minutes.  Every flight is made with extra fuel on board to cover many potential problems with weather, etc.  Our fuel was where it should have been but if we could not accomplish the next approach safely, I would have had to divert to another airport.  I called the lead flight attendant and told her I had nothing to add from the public address and did she have any questions.  She was ready for whatever I would throw at her.  At this point we reprogrammed our flight computers for a different runway and approach, accomplished the standard briefings and checklists.  About 10 minutes later I descended out of the overcast looking at the runway sideways.  The conditions seemed worse that the first time.  I disconnected the autopilot and hand flew the aircraft getting a feel for the air we were flying through.

Under these conditions I land in a slight wing down attitude touching the upwind wheel down a second or so before the down wind wheel. At about 100 feet above the ground I swing the nose parallel to the runway and dig the upwind wing into the wind to keep from drifting and to stay centered on the runway.  This is a flying maneuver as you are flying to the ground, power up till you touch down.  I could not believe how far to the left I had to swing my nose.  The winds were right at the crosswind limit for the airplane, 29 knots.  I dug my right wing into the wind at about 50 feet, everything looked good.  As my right wheel touched the spoilers started to deploy.  When the aircraft senses weight on its wheels, several things happen automatically, one of which is the spoiler panels on top of the wings deploy.  This greatly reduces the lift on the wings and plays a large part of the landing sequence.  During auto deployment of the spoilers only half of them deploy, the reason being is that if they all deployed too much lift would be lost and the aircraft would drop like a rock.  There have been instances where the nose gear has been damaged by doing this.  Back to my landing where it was all coming together quickly.  The right wheels touched down and the auto spoilers started to deploy.  I was still flying the aircraft and lowering my wing to put the left gear down when all of a sudden the copilot manually deployed all of the spoilers.  He should not have done this at that moment.  The airplane lost enough lift to drop the left gear and nose gear to the ground in a loud banging smack.  At that moment I had no idea that he had done that as I was looking out the window and down the centerline of the runway.  The airplane oscillated from the jarring landing and with maximum braking selected came to a lurching stop.  I exited the runway as soon as I could and came to a complete stop waiting for instructions from the ground controllers.  Because of our wind shear report the airport was being turned around to use other runways and we got stuck behind at least 50 airplanes trying to get to our gate.  It took over and hour to get to our gate.  I called the flight attendants and asked them if everyone was OK.  Not surprisingly several passengers were scared to death and wanted to be anywhere but on that damn plane.  Amazingly all of the passengers and flight attendants took the hard landing as a great landing under terrible conditions.  I asked the lead flight attendant if there were any sets of false teeth piled up against the cockpit door as a landing as hard as that had to have knocked them out of the passengers mouths.  I was telling my copilot that I just was not expecting to land so hard and that the entire landing seemed good until the last second.  He then admitted to deploying the spoilers at the wrong time.  We talked about the whole incident and what we could have done better or different.  By the time we got to the gate I was finished debriefing.  I went back to say goodbye to the passengers immediately.  I always say goodbye whether it was a great landing or a bad one.  I have never seen people so happy to get off an airplane….ever!  An elderly women came up to me, grabbed my hands and kissed them and in Spanish said, “My god captain, my god, thank you for bringing me to the ground.”  What the hell do you say to that?  I just smiled.  Everyone seemed thankful.  A man came up to me and said something so fast in Spanish I am not sure if he thanked me or threatened me with my life if I ever did that to him again.  Incredibly one man walked by with a sleeping boy in his arms.  I asked him if he had been sleeping the whole time and he said he had been.  It was in that moment that the man walked off the airplane holding his son I once again felt that enormous responsibility that goes with my wings.  When things go wrong in flight and pilots are concentrating on a solution to the problems unfolding, we stay focused on what is front of us not behind us. That is why I go back and say goodbye, to see the faces that trust me to do the best job I can for them.  That night the storm broke and blue skies returned the next day.  I walked to a small museum in town that was displaying some paintings by Gustav Klimt.  The museum was closed for the holiday.  I walked down 5th avenue and heard the organ playing in St Patrick’s cathedral.  A few hours later I was pulling up into the sky off of runway 31L at JFK doing a nonstop to LAX.  It was an uneventful flight and the long sunset was spectacular.  Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Thunder Storm Avoidance

2006-09-14T08:36:00.000-07:00

This is a video of my aircraft approaching a thunderstorm at altitiude. The last sequence shows the radar display. The white diamond at the bottom is my aircraft, the red blotches on the screen are the cells of the thunderstorm that I needed to avoid. I decided to go to the right of the storm.

Thanks for the comments on the fact that there is no video here for you to see. I tried something new and for the first time FlyGuy has run into a blogging snag. I am working on a fix as it would be great to show you all some real time work. Thanks for coming here, I promise there are great stories, pics, and yes video on the way. Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Lake Powell

2006-09-07T00:31:00.000-07:00

This picture was taken approaching Lake Powell from the west at 35000 feet. You can see a marina with dozens of house boats in the lower right corner.

The Fighting Chickens

2006-08-30T16:24:00.000-07:00

I was doing a preflight one day and exited the jet way to go down to the ground level for an exterior check of my aircraft. We do this on every flight. This flight happened to be leaving Los Angeles. It was a beautiful sunny day. As I descended the jet way stairs I noticed some commotion that was not normal. I saw something flash by the bottom of the stairs and realized after a moment it was a chicken and there was a man chasing it. As I continued down the stairs I saw more chickens, then I realized that they were all roosters and they were all fighting. I stopped one of the ramp workers and asked what was going on. Apparently many fighting cocks are shipped to Hawaii under the guise of shipping “mating roosters”. Whoever had packed these roosters used balsa wood to make the crates, which were the size of a coffin. During the inbound flight several of the roosters had pecked through the balsa wood and started to fight each other. When the poor ramp worker opened the cargo door about 12 angry fighting cocks flew out onto the ground scaring the poor guy half to death. When the container was pulled out of the airplane it broke open and all the rest of the roosters flew out. By the time I got to the scene the call for help was being answered. Ramp workers were showing up in tugs, trucks, and running on foot. I saw someone trying to catch an angry rooster that ended up chasing the man. Someone else was holding a rooster in gloved hands but had no idea what to do with it except to stand there holding a rooster. Two roosters were fighting on top of a stack of U.S. mail. It was easiest to catch the roosters while they were fighting and they were all fighting. I continued my exterior inspection in dumbfounded bewilderment. Eventually all the roosters were caught and taken away. I ran up the stairs and entered the flight deck where I found the captain eating a chicken sandwich. I remember laughing and saying, “Man do I have a story for you”! Be Safe, FlyGuy.

The Black Bra

2006-08-15T23:07:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time FlyGuy was yanked back into the military to participate in Desert Storm, the liberation of Kuwait from the Iraqi’s in 1990-1991.  War is a serious thing and we all took it seriously, most of the time.  I flew large cargo jets all over the world that year going to some interesting places.  We never knew where we were going until we were told to show up for an assignment, which could last for weeks.  During a period of rest in Spain I was doing my laundry in the barracks.  I went to put my clothes into a dryer and when I opened it there was a black bra inside.  I took it out and hung it up for the owner to find.  When I came back for my clothes the bra was still there.  For reasons I still cannot explain, I took the bra back to my room.  This bra was a size 34 and a B or C cup.  It had some lace bordering the cups.

Before any mission was flown there was a lot of work to do.  We had to check the flight plan for our day’s mission which could be several thousand miles.  We had to check the weather for all of it, get a security briefing, know where all the good guys were and how we could let them know we were good guys too so we wouldn’t get shot at.  We had to check our flight publications currency for the entire planet. We had to fuel plan the mission to make sure we did not run out of gas.  Sometimes the mission would require an air refueling and that was another big planning part all by itself.  All this happened in the flight planning rooms in the operations area of wherever we were.  You could walk into a flight planning room and find numerous flight crews planning all sorts of missions.  They could be pilots from any branch of the military and from other countries as well. I rarely would come across someone I knew.

I entered the flight planning room with the other pilots on my crew, at the air base in Spain. There were another half dozen crews doing their flight planning.  I went to get the standard forms we always used and found an empty table.  The tables were set high as you stood up to do the planning.  It was at this point that I unzipped my flight suit down to my waist, pulled my arms out the sleeves and tied them around my waist.  This left my upper body from the waist up naked and exposed, with the exception of a nice and lacey black bra.  Now it should be understood that I am a very hairy man and the sight of myself this way grossed even me out.  I couldn’t wait for someone to see me and watch the expressions on their faces.  As an officer and pilot I realized that there could possibly be trouble for me doing such a thing but I just did not care.  The two pilots on my crew came walking up, looked at me and continued doing their work as if I was not even there.  The other crews saw me and turned back to doing their work.  There was silence in the room, no one said a word.  What I did was weird alright but the response was weirder.  We finished flight planning and as we exited the flight planning room I zipped my flight suit back up, covering my elastic companion and feeling a little frustrated that nobody reacted to me.

I wore that bra for the next 34 days in honor of its size (34).  I learned a lot about myself and the opposite sex as well.  I hope that not too many women suffer from thick chest hairs being pulled out like I did.  That would happen randomly and for no bleepin reason.
I learned that a bra can chaff you badly if not worn properly.  The metal part of the strap can dig into your back.  I lived in fear of leaving it somewhere, then what would I do!
For 34 days in a row I wore that black bra on my exposed chest in flight planning rooms around the world.  My bra covered breasts were seen by men from many nations, by pilots of many branches of different militaries, by officers senior to me, and by other pilots I knew.  I wore my bra above and below the equator, on 5 continents, during daylight and in darkness, once during a scud missile attack.  For all of that work and all of that time I put into wearing that bra, not one time did anybody ever say anything to me.  There was no way I was going to yell out, “Hey what the $*&K are you flyboys thinking, I’m wearing a #%CK@NG BRA”!  Cool was the rule and I acted as though I had been doing this ever since my mother bought me my first one at 13.  How many people were witnesses to my breast covering adventure I can’t be sure of, but it was at least 150 pilots.  About a month after I stopped wearing the bra I ran into my squadron commander.  He was the type who would pat himself on the back for fighting a war from as far away from the front line as possible.  None of us had any respect for him as we found him to be a spineless administrator who let others lead for him.  There was an officer in the HBO series Band of Brothers who would only show up after the fighting had stopped and tell his men he had to go do some checking in at headquarters.  They hardly saw him and he was worthless to them.  So the colonel pulls me aside and tells me that he knows what I am up to and that it won’t work.  I asked him what he was talking about.  He said, “Klinger didn’t get away with it and neither will you.”  Then he walked away.  In the 1970’s there was a sitcom called MASH, based on a medical unit on the front lines in the Korean War.  One of the characters named Klinger was always trying to get classified as a “section 8”, when you are found to be mentally unfit for combat duty and sent home.  Klinger steadfastly insisted he was a woman and dressed appropriately in skirts, dresses, wedding gowns, etc.  I was mad, very mad.  I remember being madder over the fact that I was not wearing the bra that day than what the colonel had said to me.  The war ended and we all went home.  I had a girlfriend at the time and she found the bra in my luggage when I got back.  I tried to explain but she wasn’t buying it.  There were other issues between us and she broke up with me shortly thereafter.  I am not sure if the bra was the icing on the cake for her but I did find it interesting that out of all that effort I took to get a response from people, she was the only one that said anything directly about my bra and I wasn’t even wearing the damn thing.  I have told this story to my daughters many times and to their boyfriends and their friends.  There is a photo in one of the family photo albums showing me proudly puffing out my hairy chest with my 34s sticking straight out, a barren and dry desert in the background.  These days I am satisfied flying people like you to places you need to be.  I have tamed things down quite a bit.  Although there is that orange clown wig I wear from time to time, but that is a story for another day.  Be Safe, FlyGuy

BLOCKED !

2006-08-02T07:19:00.000-07:00

BLOCKED!

Imagine living in a world where everyone communicated with as few words as possible.  In this world it is expected of you to be precise and concise in everything you say.  William Blake, W.B Yeats, Rumi, Voltaire, and Samuel Clemens could not exist here.   In this world only one person can talk at any given time.  If two people tried to talk at the same time everyone’s words would break down into static and garbled unintelligible words. On the flight decks of modern airliners it is no different when it comes to radio communication.

It all started in 1847 when a child named Heinrich Rudolf Hertz was born. He would eventually produce what has become one of the most important works of science ever written.  Hertz was the first person to send and receive radio waves.  He did this in 1888.   After 118 years and all the amazing milestones in aviation and space, we still talk one person at a time, no matter if it is the International Space Station, a commercial airliner over the Pacific Ocean, or the tower controller at Cruzeiro de Sul on the Jurua River in remote eastern Brazil.  Yeah, we might be restricted by the laws of sine wave propagation, but hey, we weren’t supposed to fly to begin with.  This situation can lead to some frustrating, stressful, and humorous situations.

Frustrating

Sometimes it gets busy in a bad way.  Great example was the time I was on the ground at JFK taxiing out for takeoff.  As soon as we switched over to ground control to leave our parking area, I realized it was going to be one of those days.  I estimated we were about number 30 or so for takeoff.  The taxiways were jammed, every intersection was being used or being blocked and the ground controller could only talk to one of us at a time.  Due to this restriction the ground controller often talks to us simultaneously, the following example is based on the airfield runways and taxiways at JFK.  If you want to follow it, go to Google and search for JFK airfield diagram.  “United 316 turn left onto alpha hold short of hotel, American 1222 follow the regional jet to your right, Comair 467 straight ahead to hotel right alpha, hold short of whiskey alpha.  Virgin 925 transition to Juliet, cross 4 left and contact tower on 123.9.  All you would hear in response is “United 316, American 1222, Comair 467, Virgin 925.  The controller would continue in this way for a while.  All it takes to screw things up is for two people to transmit at the same time, and then all you get is “BLZZIGHOOLMASFIT”.  To inform the controller that his transmission was disrupted someone normally says the word, “blocked”.  The controller can rattle off a clearance and be told “blocked”, he will try again and hear “blocked”, and try again and hear “blocked”.  This situation is very frustrating to a controller.  Once I had a ground controller say to all of us, “Alright everybody shut the hell up, don’t speak until you’re spoken to.”  I have also heard, “The next aircraft that does that gets pulled out of sequence.” While trying to get into Frankfurt Germany on a day that blessed us with a blizzard, we pilots were stepping on each others transmissions constantly.  The controller was trying his best to get us all in the right positions to maximize the number of landings.  We were not helping him.  He wanted us all to maintain a speed of 210 knots.  A British Airways (call sign speed bird) pilot made the mistake of saying, “Speed bird XXX would like to maintain 230 knots for a bit more”.  The German controller came back instantly with, “Hey Speed bird what do you think this is, a game of checkers, I make a move, then you make a move, 210 nooooooowwwww”!  A female ground controller who was in a vengeful state was dishing out abuse after abuse for many minutes.  There was a break in her transmissions when somebody said in a soft monotone, “Was I married to you?”  It may have been me who said that, but I don’t remember.

Stressful

There are times that getting a clearance from a controller is time critical.  You have to have a verbal clearance to land and sometimes that clearance is late in coming.  I have seen aircraft go around because they could not get a word in to verify a landing clearance.  I have been in situations where I knew or could see other jets converging on me and trying to get the controller to turn me but was blocked by other transmissions. You don’t want to know what it sounds like when an airport shuts down or even worse, a control center loses power and hundreds of us are hung out to fend for ourselves.

Humorous

I have heard radio chatter that could be turned into an award winning comedy show.  When it comes to blocked transmissions there is one consistent thing that happens amongst us pilots and that is the poor pilot who thinks he is talking to the passengers or even better, a flight attendant on the intercom but in reality is transmitting on an air traffic frequency.  It could be ground, tower, approach, departure, or center frequencies.  I have heard it all.  On Denver centers frequency I heard a United pilot transmit to the world (he thought he was talking to the passengers), “Ladies and gentleman welcome aboard United XXXX from the flight deck.  First let me say thank you for your business today and we will do our best to make this the most enjoyable flight you have ever had.   Our arrival time into Los Angeles will be 6:25 pm, 15 minutes ahead of schedule.  The weather in Los Angeles is 75 degrees with partly cloudy skies and winds out of the west at 12 miles per hour.  By now the air traffic controller is pulling their hair out and several pilots are laughing hysterically, knowing it could easily be them doing this foot in mouth talking.  While jets are moving along at 500 mph and a desperate controller is waiting for this guy to stop, there is nothing that anyone can do.  United XXXX was not through.  “Today in the main cabin our fantastic flight attendants will be serving our Mexicana fare so please enjoy your service.  If there is anything we can do for you from the flight deck, blah, blah, blah.  When the pilot finally releases his mic button what follows next is the best part.  That pilot is guaranteed at least a half dozen jabs by his fellow pilots who had to listen to him.  It would sound something like this, “That sounded very professional”, If you have any leftovers can I have some?”, “Are your flight attendants fantastic AND cute”? “You can so something for me, stop talking”, What was the weather in Los Angeles again”?  Sometimes the controller tells us to stop, sometimes they yell at us to be professional.  The unwritten law of giving the offending pilot verbal hell will never change.  One thousand years from now when we are rocketing to the distant ends of our universe, some poor pilot will mistakenly transmit on an intergalactic common frequency, thinking he is talking to the 50,000 passengers on his space ship.  It might sound something like this, “Citizens of Earth, the Republic of Mars, and all Extraterrestrials, welcome aboard the star ship Wilbur Wright serving you with nonstop service to the planets of Gamma Sector 6.  Star ship staff will pamper you with other worldly foods, zero gravity recreation, and entertainment that any humanoid could enjoy. My name is captain Kirk and I believe this will be the most enjoyable experience you have ever had.  I would like to extend a special welcome aboard to the thousands of Venebrium Slime Devils who are with us relocating to planet Zanadu.  We are sorry for the loss of your home planet and wish you the best as your future is secure and bright in the hands of the Intergalactic Space Federation.  I ask all of you to get to know each other and visit me in the command center, Kirk out”.  As his lips slam shut Kirk’s first officer says to him, “Captain, I think you transmitted on common”.  Kirk turns pale as he sees “GALACTIC COMMON” on the holographic communications panel. Within seconds from all over the galaxy, like perfectly thrown daggers, other pilots respond to the call. “Jim, go back to Star Fleet”, “My most enjoyable experience is not hearing you talk”, “Are Venebrium Slime Devils edible”?, “I’m a humanoid and I’d like you to entertain me”, “When I visit you can I play with the switch thingies”?, “I thought WE destroyed Zanadu”, and so it would go not for a few seconds but perhaps for hours as deep space would be a lonely place.  I am not sure what the future holds for aviation but I do know that pilots will always be pilots and we will forever act like children when it comes to hearing one of our fellow pilots screw up.  Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Goodbye My Friend

2006-07-25T17:09:00.000-07:00

PAUL JOSEPH ORLANDI
4/30/1950-7/21/2006

After a long battle with cancer caused by agent orange, a great man passed away on July 21st, as the sun was rising. He wanted little, gave much, and never spoke a word unless he had something good to say. Paul, you will be missed and always loved.

"To fly west, my friend, is a flight we all must take for a final check"- Author Unknown

Grand Canyon

2006-07-19T19:27:00.000-07:00

I took these picture's approaching the Grand Canyon from the east. The first one is about 80 miles away, the second about 20 miles away, and the third was taken directly overhead the Colorado river. We were at 32,000 ft. I zoomed in on the river shot. I never get tired of seeing it.

Grandmothers from Hell

2006-07-12T18:12:00.000-07:00

There is no doubt in my mind that the most abuse I have received from passengers has been from innocent looking elderly grandmothers. They come out of nowhere with no warning, like an Osprey, talons out, wings folded back, me the unconcerned rainbow trout basking in the eddies and currents of time. These are no ordinary human beings as they prey on innocent people, projecting on to them their worst fears and anger. If they were in a coliseum full of fighting gladiators, they would be the ones waiting with smiles on their faces to slowly stick their arm out and turn their thumb down. Death to the warrior.

Many years ago a volcano erupted in a remote part of Alaska. We have all seen the devastating effects of volcanic eruptions. One of its pyroclastic components is volcanic ash which is basically tiny bits of hot rock that number in the billions. It is the black cloud that rises above the volcano, catches the air currents and falls to the ground somewhere downwind from the volcano. When volcanic ash settles to the ground it can bury towns and villages, muddy rivers, and turn to a cement like state when wet.

Airplanes and volcanic ash are a very, very bad combination. When a jet flies through volcanic ash it scours the airplane like a sandblaster taking off paint, metal, the outer layers of the windscreen, and sanding away at the interior parts of the engines. Given enough time in this situation you would end up flying a 300,000 pound glider and not able to see where you were going. This would be very, very bad. So we avoid it at all costs. When a volcano erupts the airspace around it is closed down. The eruption and its ash cloud are monitored and studied in great detail. This information is passed on to us and we decide if it is safe to continue a flying operation once the airspace is opened back up.

I was enjoying trips to Anchorage at that time with 24 hour layovers and 24 hours of daylight. It is a great place to be any time of the year. On this particular day the airport had just opened back up after volcanic ash had fallen for the previous few days. There were huge piles of ash the size of a bus all around the airport where it had been scraped up and dumped to the side. The volcano and the ash had been big news and the airport was busy with travelers who had been waiting to leave for days. I was waiting for my jet to arrive at its gate, when I was approached by a sweet and kind looking grandmother who was using the assistance of one of those big wooden canes. “I am worried about the volcano, are we going to be alright?” she asked. I sucked in a vast quantity of air and in great length told her that everything was just fine, we would be safe and arrive on time. She asked, “How do you know the volcano is not going to blow up again? Another gulp of air and I explained. With a determined look on her face she asked, “What about that ash in the air, wont we go through it?” I said, “No we won’t” and told her why. She had concerns about the ash on the ground, turbulent air, and other aviation maladies that had no bearing on this particular flight. I reassured her over and over that I was there for her safety, and all these areas of concern had been considered. This would be the safest flight she ever had. She then stared at me not saying a word. She had very blue eyes I remember. Then it happened, she took the big curved end of her cane and hit me in my shoulder with it, continued to look me in the eyes and yelled, “Well thank you very much, now I have nothing to worry about!” She turned and walked away, my hand rubbing my shoulder and about 100 people staring at me as though I had just mugged the miserable woman.

Another incident happened while flying into Fort Meyers Florida. The air was cruel that day, bouncing us severely all the way down final. I remember the control column going from stop to stop as I maintained a straight path to the ground. The throttles had to be controlled manually as the auto throttles were incapable of keeping up with the turbulent air. And so it went for many minutes, the nose dropping out of the sky while the fuselage was buffeted left and right, correcting with back pressure, forward throttle, and lateral corrections all at the same time, then just as quickly correcting it all in reverse. The passengers must have felt like a paint can being mixed at the hardware store. The trickiest part of the approach was transitioning to the landing phase as the winds shifted drastically close to the ground. Left aileron, forward on the throttles, right aileron, forward on the pitch, throttles back, left aileron, more of that, back on the throttles again, nose up, throttles forward, right aileron………………………….. As I transitioned to land, in the last moment I chose to land on the left main gear only, using aileron and rudder to maintain runway alignment, the right main gear still in the air. I then rolled the aircraft onto the right main then put the nose gear on the ground. All of that happens in about two seconds followed by spoiler and thrust reverser deployment. It is not your smoothest landing technique but you got to do what you got to do. Once we taxied clear of the runway and got to our gate, I went back to say goodbye to our passengers. The passengers deplaning were solemn, frazzled, some thanking me as they fly often and know the difficult conditions from the easy ones. It was not a good day to be a passenger. Waiting in a front row seat was a grandmother type listening to all of this. When her wheel chair came to get her she stood up and approached me. I smiled at her and realized she was jabbing a finger into my chest. She said, “Young man, that was the crappiest landing I have ever had. Go back to pilot school before you kill somebody!” The flight attendant next to me gasped. I smiled and politely said as she walked away, “Please don’t tell my mother.” She whipped around and screamed, “I’m telling everybody, everybody!” and walked away completely forgetting about the wheelchair and its stunned driver.

My cousin encouraged me to tell this story so I dedicate it to him, one of the most honorable men I have ever known. Be Safe, FlyGuy

Pilots are mind readers

2006-07-03T09:35:00.000-07:00

One day some time ago I found myself deadheading back to my base.  That is when I catch a ride home and sit in the cabin with all the passengers.  As I was waiting to board I was standing next to a mother and her son.  The young boy was about 8 years old and was going to travel by himself.  The mother was very upset and crying.  The agent took the boy down to the jet and as they stepped into the jet way the boy turned around and waved to his mother.  She started crying harder.  I was in my uniform and approached the mother asking her about her son.  This was to be their first time away from each other.  He was going to visit his father.  I asked the mother if she wanted me to sit next to her son.  She was grateful and thanked me.  I then asked her many questions about her son.  Where did he go to school, what was his teachers name, best friends name, favorite food,  best movie ever, sports stuff, what did his room look like, etc, etc.

I then proceeded onto the jet and found him sitting in a row all by himself.  I asked if I could sit in the row with him and he politely said yes.  He was reading a book but he kept stealing glances at me.  Finally I told him I was a pilot and going home, that if he had any questions about flying he could ask me as I knew EVERYTHING.  I told him that we pilots have brains that go beyond the capabilities of the human mind, so focused are we on flying that we can actually see things just before they happen.  In addition to that we can also read minds which we must do constantly while flying so we don’t fly into each other.  If I know what the other pilots out there are thinking and they know what I am thinking then it is very simple to avoid each other.  He was very, very skeptical.

To prove my point I asked him to think of something I could not possibly know about him as he agreed we had never met before.  I said, “How about if you concentrate on what your favorite soup is?”  I stared at him, right into his eyes, for about 10 seconds and said, “My guts are telling me its tomato and rice.”  He just stared at me.  Then I said, “Do you like those little goldfish crackers with your soup?”  He nodded his head.  I then asked him to think of where he goes to school and what he does in an average day, who he talks to and what subjects he likes.  I rubbed the sides of my head as if in intense concentration, my eyes closed, mumbling to myself.  I said to him, “Is your teachers name Mrs. Candish?”  “Yes” he said.  “I think you like math and that girl that sits behind you”, I said.  His face turned red.  I told him about Sandy Schick, the girl I liked but never talked to in the 4th grade and what a big mistake that was.  My mind is telling me that you like baseball.” I said.  He said, “How do you know all this?”  I pointed to my wings and told him it just goes along with the job.  I then told him he needed to clean his room more as his mother would appreciate it, that his best friend Robert was not as smart as he was, and that he should do a better job of hiding his diary that was currently under his mattress.  He stared at me and said, “OK”.

At this point I was not remembering all the other information his mother had given me so I told him that I was exhausted after using my brain so intently.  I closed my eyes and woke up during descent.  Just before we landed I asked him if he had any questions for me.  He asked me if I knew what he was going to be when he grew up.  I said that I did not know as my abilities could only handle the present and the immediate future.  “If I knew the future, I never would have asked my ex-wife out on a date”, I said.  I looked at him and told him that based on what I was seeing in him now; he could be anything he wanted to be as long as he worked hard and never gave up on his dreams.  That seemed to satisfy him as he sat back in his chair and smiled.  After we landed I had to get going so I shook his hand, wished him the best and told him to call his mother to let her know he was OK because I could see she missed him and loved him .  I grabbed my bags and left.  He should now be in high school, I think of him often and wonder if he ever thinks of that genius pilot he met.  Be safe, FlyGuy

Controller's Delight

2006-06-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

Communication in the flying game is quick and to the point. We are asked or told to do something, be it a radio frequency change, a turn to a heading, to climb or descend, clearances for a myriad of things, and so forth. The skies are filled with airways that have thousands of jets flying 1000 feet apart in opposite directions, with close to 1000 miles an hour of speed differential. It is one of those jobs that require you to pay attention. Controlling this volume of traffic are the professional air traffic controllers. We could not do this job without them. There are pilots who fly the same airspace on a regular basis who talk to the same controller day after day. This can lead to both parties recognizing the voice of the other party. I have heard pilots checking in to a new frequency, and upon hearing the controller’s voice asking how the new baby is. Fly Guy has never had this happen to him; however this past week climbing out of JFK into the high altitude structure, I overheard the following conversation between three male pilots and a female air traffic controller. She was working New York Center when a US Airways flight checked in……………………….

US Airways “US Airways XXXX checking in 320”

NY Center “Roger US Airways XXX 320”

US Airways “You sound tired today”

NY Center “Just got back from a week of vacation”

Jet Blue “Sounds like you had a lot of fun”

NY Center “It was Las Vegas”

Fly Guy “Is it true that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?”

NY Center “Not telling”

What followed was 30 seconds of silence then “US Airways XXXX contact Washington Center on XXXX.

It was back to business but my copilot talked about all the possibilities for the next 2000 miles. Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Viva Las Vegas

2006-06-12T06:55:00.000-07:00

This story was told to me by another pilot.  He will remain anonymous and this is the story as told to me.  Several years ago I flew a leg from Orlando to Las Vegas on the Boeing 727.  This was well before in-flight entertainment systems that offer 20 channels of video and 20 channels of audio entertainment.  You were left to your own devices to stay entertained.  This particular flight was way oversold and the gate agents were busy offering lots of incentives to the passengers to give up their seats and wait for the next flight.  When our final paper work arrived, the agent had the last two passengers to board with her.  As they came on the airplane they went right by the flight deck.  They were a man and a woman who looked like characters out of a Miami Vice episode.  He was wearing a suit that looked like shark skin with a white shirt, the collar open down to his sternum with gold chains around his neck  She  had on a suit made of ultra suede, dressed to the nines, tons of makeup, and big, big hair.  He looked like a drug dealer and she looked like a Vegas showgirl.  They were seated in the last row of the coach cabin.

About an hour into the flight we got a call from the lead flight attendant informing us that the couple had been cut off from buying any more alcohol as they were drunk and disruptive but they did not need our assistance.  Another hour went by and we got another call telling us that they suspected the couple was now drinking alcohol they had brought on board.  The flight attendant said they were probably hiding it and drinking when they were working other parts of the cabin.

On final approach with only minutes before landing the phone in the flight deck rang several times(ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding) in a few seconds.  I answered the call and was told, “That flashy couple is going to blows, and there is blood all over the place on the ceiling and seats.  We need security to meet the plane.”  We landed and had the local authorities meet the aircraft.  The passengers were told to stay in their seats until the police could come aboard and escort two passengers off the aircraft.  The airport police came on board, went to the last row of the airplane and took them both off the airplane, the man in handcuffs.  The police later told us that they had been popping pills along with drinking their own alcohol.  The man told her he had enough and didn’t want anymore.  He caught her dropping pills into his drink and punched her in the face.  She did not appreciate the punch and slammed her fists into his nose and the fight was on.  Eventually the flight attendants were able to get them to stop and separated them.

When we walked off the jet way we saw the woman in line for the next flight back to Orlando with a bag of ice on her nose.  The man was taken into custody.  To my amazement we were told by a flight attendant that they had come to Las Vegas to get married.

That is the story as told to me. Shortest honeymoon I have ever heard about.  I have always said that if you want to see the greatest cross section of humanity anywhere on this planet, go hang out in baggage claim in the Las Vegas International Airport.  Be Safe, FlyGuy

You can hear this story on Joe Deons' podcasting site at, http://joepodcaster.libsyn.com/

2006-06-01T14:09:00.000-07:00

These pictures were taken on final approach to
Tampa International Airport. I was able to set a timer on my camera which automatically took several photos during our approach. The picture on the bottom shows us about 3 miles out.

Captain Yakity Yak

2006-05-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

I want you to imagine showing up for work one day and you sign in by logging on to a computer.  About an hour and a half after that, you find yourself barreling down a runway at 150 miles an hour calling out critical numbers to someone you never met before.  You leap into the sky to return a few days later.  Then you find yourself at 6 to 8 miles above the planet heading to some destination and starting to talk to this person you don’t know, 2 feet away.  We pilots do our jobs well and professionally, but every once in a while you find yourself flying with a person who makes you crazy.

This trip I was the copilot and the captain I was with was given the nickname
“Captain Yakity Yak.  This man considered the death of his dearly departed mother and an untied shoe to have equal significance and bearing on his life and he had an unforgiving need to talk about it all, constantly, nonstop, for hours.  We took off from Los Angeles on a nice day, departing out over the ocean.  The water of the Pacific was blue and smooth, not one white cap in sight.  I think I said something like, “Boy, look at the water.”  Nearly 5 hours later when we were approaching New York he finished talking by saying, “And I sold that surf board two years later.”  I was in agony.  The ride to the hotel was no different as he chose to talk nonstop to the van driver about cell phone reception.  At the hotel he asked me where we were going to go out to that night.  I told him I needed go to the gym and workout and that I would see him in the morning.  I went to the gym and climbed on a stair stepper, punching in the data to start it, when suddenly I heard a voice say, “There you are, I don’t like those machines, these bikes are great, let me tell you about my first bike, speaking of bikes, how about that Lance Armstrong…………… .” Then, the next day, a miracle happened.

On the way to the airport the following morning, I was sitting in blissful silence, wondering if someone had cut the captains tongue out.  I saw that he was working a crossword puzzle.  I asked him about the puzzle, he mumbled something and went right back to work on the puzzle.  When the van pulled up to the curb at the airport it was like a switch turned on to captain yakity yaks mouth.  The siren cranked up again and he was going nonstop through security talking about what was wrong with his room at the hotel.  When we got through security I told him I would meet him at the airplane.  I went to the news stand and bought the biggest book of crossword puzzles I could find.  I decided to get the most difficult level available as yakity yak is one smart man.  We were flying from New York to San Francisco and I just couldn’t take any more.  After we leveled off and all the checks were completed I pulled out the crossword puzzle book and said, “I found this in my room, do you want it?”   He was drooling like Pavlov’s dog.  It was one of the most enjoyable and peaceful flights I have ever had.

Air Force 1

2006-05-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

I was passing through the Sacramento California airport when the President was visiting for the day. Air Force 1 was parked fairly close to the terminal and the secret service did'nt shoot me when I took the photo. FlyGuy

You Did It How Many Times?

2006-05-02T11:57:00.000-07:00

I had the fortune of flying this weekend with a spirited copilot who was energetic, gregarious, and exceptional in his flying skills. He also has the sexual appetite of a marine battalion. Upon arriving in Las Vegas for a 24 hour layover, he introduced me to a woman who had flown out to stay with him. We all arrived at the hotel and as we were getting our room keys, he leaned over to me and whispered that it might be in my best interest if I asked for a room on another floor, just as the clerk gave us adjacent rooms. I took his advice and got a room 5 floors above his and at opposite ends of the building. I was asked to go out with them for the evening and politely declined. The next night, almost 24 hours after arriving we met back at the airport for a redeye to Orlando. During our 4 hour flight I asked him how his layover was and did they do anything. I will spare you most of the details but in the time that they had together they had sex six times. Using higher math, that averaged out to one sexual encounter every four hours for 24 hours. His perfect verbal skills painted a picture in my head that I soon won’t forget. Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Please, tell that to my wife

2006-04-25T13:31:00.000-07:00

I showed up at the Fort Lauderdale airport on Monday afternoon for a nonstop flight to Los Angeles.  Shortly after arriving at the aircraft a maintenance supervisor told me that the aircraft had a problem with a valve in the engine, and we were looking at a 3 hour delay.  I walked out to the gate area to inform the agents working the flight.  I hung out at the gate to answer questions and made a public address to the customers in the gate area.  I explained what the problem was, why it needed to be fixed, and why it would take that long to do.  I also told them that based on the time frame we would be arriving in LA between 1130 pm and 1230 am.  The flight was booked with 183 passengers who of course all had different reasons for flying this flight on this day.  So the questions began and I answered them all as quickly and honestly as I could.  An elderly gentleman of about 80 told me he was going to be on the tonight show on Wednesday and would he get there in time.  A young mother told me her daughter wanted to meet me, she was about 5 as she told me she was in kindergarten.  One passenger wanted to know if we had a spare plane we could use.  A concerned young women asked if she would be able to get a cheeseburger in-flight.  A young gentleman was hoping to make a tight connection.

It was somewhere in this questioning that a man about 35 years of age approached me, held out his cell phone to me and asked, “Would you please tell my wife what you just told us, she doesn’t trust me.”  Curious but baffled I put the phone to my ear and said, “This is the Captain speaking, how can I help you?”  She wanted to know why we were delayed so I told her.  One of the main reasons we needed the problem fixed was to have anti ice ability on the engine.  There was weather we could possibly fly through and may have needed to heat up the engines at altitude to prevent ice buildup.  The wife of the man told me that the weather was just fine in Los Angeles so we should just go without it.  I told her that she was correct as it is part of my job to know all about the weather and not just in Los Angeles but the other 2,096 miles of airspace that we would travel through to get there.  The weather of concern was 1000 miles away from her and I did not think she could see that far. I also told her she had a husband standing in front of me and it was my responsibility to make sure that later that night he would be safely standing in front of her.  As she was agreeing with me and accepting my words I glanced up at the husband who had a look of relief on his face similar to the one a young boy has when he finally gets to pee.  I told her I had to go as other customers were waiting to talk to me and handed the phone back to her husband who launched into a foreign language I could not understand but recognized as Middle Eastern.  I can only assume his first words were “I told you so!”

The next person was a man about 30 years of age. He was about 6 foot 6 inches and looked like a professional wrestler.  To my amazement he held out his Blackberry and asked if I would talk to his girlfriend.  It was the same thing all over again!  This impressive specimen of a man was shaking as he handed me the phone in relief.  I introduced myself and asked her how is it she makes this guy shake from 2000 miles away.  I was instantly her best friend.  A brief explanation to her and I was done.

A decision was made to use an inbound aircraft for my flight and we took off about an hour and a half late.  I can’t help but wonder what was going on in those couples lives that trust and the lack of it has become such a burden for them.  In my game, trust is everything.  Be safe, FlyGuy

Waiting for Takeoff

2006-04-18T21:59:00.000-07:00

This photo was taken in line for takeoff on runway 13Right at JFK last week. You can see the buildings of lower Manhatten in the background.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

2006-04-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

I was catching a ride to work on Friday with my good friends at Southwest airlines. I was able to get a seat in the cabin rather than having to sit on the extra “jump seat” in the cockpit. I know that airline seats can be very uncomfortable but the cockpit jump seats are torture. I settled in between two women and we all tried to hunker down in the sanctity of our “space.” After takeoff and climbing through what was probably 10,000 feet, the airplane encountered some turbulence that made several passengers scream, including the poor women to my left. She had a look of utter panic and looked at me for some kind of support. I was in my uniform. I told her that what just happened was no big deal and that as long as I wasn’t screaming; she had nothing to worry about. Just then the airplane bounced hard and she started crying. I reached out and took both of her hands in mine and she gripped them like they were a pair of winning lottery tickets. She started to tell me how scared she has always been of flying and that she flies every week. I just listened as she told me her story. When the turbulence stopped, I let go of her hands and listened some more. I realized that I was listening to a very nice human being, who like most of us just wants to live a good life and get along. I heard about her family and job, her car and friends. She lives in Sacramento but likes New Mexico. Before I knew it, the rushing sound of air over the landing gear was filling my ears. At the gate in Los Angeles I got off and she went on to another destination. I will never see her again but her “thank you” kept a smile on my face for my redeye to Florida. Be Safe, FlyGuy.

The Lady in Red

2006-04-09T09:47:00.000-07:00

Just before pushback from the gate in Los Angeles, an elderly woman of about 75 years of age stepped into the flight deck and said that she had something important to say. She proceeded to tell us that in her lifetime she had been married to two pilots (yes, I asked if they were at the same time) and that she had many sexual experiences while flying. She was dressed in red, all red, even had a red beret on. She told us about the time that she was having a “lovemaking” encounter while flying on a commercial aircraft many years ago. According to her in the middle of this act, the airplane suddenly encountered strong turbulence. The turbulence greatly enhanced the physical encounter and it was one of her more memorable moments. I told her that if I was 30 years younger I would be all over her. She smiled and said “I’ll be in seat 6C”, turned around and went to her seat. Unfortunately this incident was witnessed by the lead flight attendant, the gate agent, and my copilot. I didn’t hear the end of it until we parked at the gate at JFK. That is what I like about this job; you just never know who is going to show up. Be safe, FlyGuy

Washington D.C.

2006-04-05T22:43:00.000-07:00

We overflew Washington D.C. this past weekend and was able to get some good photos of the city. The first photo was taken at altitude, which was 34,000 feet. The second shot was a zoom shot. Click on the photos to enlarge, you can see the Capital Building and the entire mall to the Lincoln Memorial and the Pentagon across the Potomac.

Windshear

2006-03-30T07:06:00.000-08:00

This last Sunday afternoon I flew from JFK to Mexico City. The international station code for Mexico City is “MMX”. Mexico City sits at 7,300 feet above sea level higher than the bases of most ski resorts. The city sits in a great plain that was once a manmade island city in the middle of a great lake. The plain is surrounded by many volcanoes, some of which are still active. This airport gets special attention from a pilot’s perspective due to the surrounding mountainous terrain, high altitude, volcanic activity, and notoriously low visibility. This day the winds were strong and gusty, the ride uncomfortable for the passengers. When we were cleared for landing by the tower we were given a wind shear advisory. A wind shear is when two air masses that are close to each other move in different directions. An aircraft flying through a wind shear can experience a rapid decrease in the air moving over its wings. In a worse case scenario this could cause an aircraft to stall and lose altitude.

After wind shear was understood, warning systems were placed in modern airliners and pilots were trained on how to detect and escape from wind shears. We practice these maneuvers during our recurrent training.

At about 300 feet above the ground I felt a distinct tail up movement of my jet followed by an airspeed change of 20 knots. At the same moment our wind shear alert system indicated a wind shear. Any of these indications warrants an escape procedure. The procedure is to go to full power on the engines and raise the nose to about 15 degrees. After doing this we were out of the shear in a matter of seconds. This told me the shear was not a big one but procedure is procedure. We flew around the pattern and did another approach; the winds were still buffeting us all the way to the ground. A real wind shear alert is something most pilots will only see in a simulator. Now that I have encountered a wind shear I am satisfied that my training and therefore the training of thousands of other pilots is very good.

It was Sunday and the parks were full of families, lovers, vendors, and dancers. I have added a couple of pictures of sights in the park we walked through. I had chicken enchiladas to die for at Café de Taguba. The mole sauce is dark brown. We flew out the next day under sunny skies and light winds. Be safe, FlyGuy.

Blizzard of 06

2006-03-08T16:18:00.000-08:00

I was caught up in the Noreaster last month and was grounded during the blizzard. I took this photo the next day in Central Park. Beautiful sunny day.

One More Thing

2006-02-27T11:24:00.000-08:00

Tonight, February 24th, was one of those times when things kept going wrong. As soon as I got to the jet for a JFK-San Fran flight I saw a mechanic in the flight deck reading our thick dispatch manual. He told me that the aft lavatories had a leak and he could not trouble shoot the problem in time for our departure. The flight was only half full so we decided to go with only two lavatories. Seems like a simple decision but these things once approved by me start a paper trail that goes all the way back to the central operations center. That place looks like a military control center out of a Tom Clancy novel. After being approved by the Grand Dynamo of Lavatory Control, we were cleared to go. During pushback our tug driver got so confused as to where we needed him to take us that I had to tell him things like, “Put your drive in reverse, follow that yellow line behind you, go left, go more left, that’s good, don’t be afraid, you’re doing fine.” All at the lightning speed of about 5 mph. We finally got started and taxied out under ships power, glad to be free of tug man. It was not a busy night; we ended up being about number 10 for takeoff. As you approach the number one position you need to be ready to go. Sitting on the ground doesn’t do any of us good. You want to get where you’re going, it burns precious fuel, and it’s not as fun as being in the sky. Just as we were cleared onto the runway, a warning light came on telling us one of our pressure doors was not locked. I called the flight attendant station at that door and told her what we had. She went to cycle the door lever. At that moment in time the tower cleared us for takeoff. The copilot informed the tower what our situation was. At that moment the light went out and I told the flight attendant it worked. The copilot told the tower we were ready to go. There was no response from tower. He tried again and no response. I tried and no response. Just then the door light came on again. I called the same flight attendant and she went to cycle the door again. There we were sitting in the takeoff position and the control tower was not responding to any of our radio calls. At this point we had been on the runway for about 45 seconds, an eternity with no communication. When you are on tower frequency no one else talks except the tower and the aircraft taxiing on to or on the runway. It was either towers problem or ours. The radio problem was ours. Just then the door light went out again, pressure door problem resolved. A minor mechanical problem had occurred in the copilot’s microphone switch keeping his microphone button engaged, thereby rendering all communication impossible. That took us another 15 seconds. When the copilot disconnected from the primary communication system, the voice of a very agitated tower controller was saying our call sign. All he had heard from the copilot before his microphone got stuck was, “Tower *****234 has a problem.” Then the tower heard nothing for over a minute. I told the tower our problem was resolved, we had a stuck microphone, and were ready for takeoff. We immediately received our takeoff clearance and took to the sky none too soon. The flight to San Fran was uneventful. The sky was exceptionally clear with a magnificent star field and a few shooting stars. We could see the lights of the San Fran bay area in western Nevada. Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Sunset over Clouds

2006-02-20T11:16:00.000-08:00

This photo was taken at 32000 on a climbout from Atlanta to LAX. The colors are true, the cloud deck below us looked spectacular. This moment is what makes the job great.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

2006-02-17T06:30:00.000-08:00

I received and anonymous email today from someone who wanted to know if I am still posting. To you, whoever you are, thank you and yes indeed I am. Fly Guy was out of commission with an eye injury. I just flew my first trip in about a month.

To get into the operations area at my pilot base I take an elevator down to a lower level. There is a key code that one must enter to get the elevator moving. At this lower level where the elevator door opens you will find a contract security person sitting in a chair waiting for people like me. Their job is to check the validity of my security badge. Do you remember the movie “Men in Black”? There was a character in that movie who sat by the elevator that Will Smith would get into. Next to the man was a huge fan and nothing else at all. The man was always there waiting, waiting. At my elevator there is a character named Mary, 50ish, polite, and desperately needing to tell you her latest conspiracy theory. The elevator doors opened and there she was with her newspaper as her proof and me her victim. Mary doesn’t say hello, she just launches into her spiel like the dart from a blow gun. According to Mary our vice president Dick Cheney did not like his hunting partner at all. Mary tells me that our government is using the vice president as the perfect assassin, getting rid of the “trouble makers”. Intrigued, I stupidly asked Mary to tell me more. On and on she went explaining that there were 65 to 200 bullets in this poor old lawyer but that was not the reason for the heart attack. You see, he was not supposed to live after receiving all those bullets, therefore when the vice president went to go see him; he slipped the poor devil some poison and kapow, heart attack. Another thing I learned about this crime was the poor man was snuck up on by the V.P. The V.P. told the lawyer to go hunt in one direction while the V.P. allegedly went in another direction. In reality he circled back for the kill and emptied his 65 to 200 bullets into the victim. I kept trying to remember if I had seen something like this on CSI Capitol Hill once. I finally had to just walk away as I often have from Mary and knowing of course, that within 15 minutes I would be back in that same spot, catching the elevator back up to the concourse level. I was halfway down the hall and I could still hear her talking. On the way up the elevator doors had closed and she was still talking. I must admit there is a dark side of me that secretly hopes that when the elevator door opens, Mary will be there. I left LAX on a redeye for JFK last night. We were dispatched with half of our pressurization system working (safe and legal) which kept us to a maximum altitude of 35000 feet. We were heavy and our rotation speed at takeoff was 156 knots using 5 degrees of flaps. Flight time was only 4 hours 5 minutes due to great tailwinds of about 140 mph giving us a ground speed close to 600mph. Flight visibility was excellent being about 150 miles forward visibility. The lights of Chicago were memorable contrasted against the Great Lakes pitch black. About 250 miles out the air turned turbulent and we descended to 25000 feet into smooth air. Got bounced around on final but the landing was damn good, yeah it was mine. There was a blizzard in NYC less than a week ago, over two feet worth. I don’t know what they did with it but all the snow was gone. It is time for some sleep. This evening we fly to San Francisco for a long layover. So Fly Guy is still here and there are lots of stories in the works, all of which are true. Be Safe, Fly Guy

Winds, Ice, and the naked woman

2006-01-21T06:14:00.000-08:00

Well what can I say, there are times when you know things will be more memorable than others and this last weekend of flying was one of them. Started out with a redeye from Lax to Tampa on Friday the 13th (should have given me a clue). We landed in a high wind conditions that were on the inner edge of the aircrafts crosswind limits. All day long the winds got worse. We went back out to the Tampa airport in the late afternoon to fly to Atlanta and on to Windsor Locks in New England. The gate agent working my flight informed me that Orlando was out of wind limits, four airplanes were diverting to Tampa, and my flight was delayed. An hour and a half later we got a jet and started our preflight. I did the outside exterior check and when I entered the Jetway, the boarding process was in progress. Upon reaching the cockpit I saw that there was a woman halfway in talking to the copilot. She was friendly enough and I told her to get her camera and I would be happy to take a picture of her sitting in my seat. This is a common occurrence and we just had a visit with a father and young son. After taking her picture I asked her to view the photo to see if it was what she wanted. She was happy with it and told me she had a great photo to show me. After clicking through several photos she said, “Here it is, what do you think?” She turned the camera towards me and there I was looking at a photo of her completely naked lying on a bed. She then proudly showed it to the copilot. I wanted to tell her that I was glad she wasn’t my daughter but said “wow those sheets look expensive”. I told her we had to get to work and she left never to be seen again. Weird. We departed and flew to Atlanta where the winds were again on the edge of the aircrafts limitations. We turned the aircraft and headed up to Windsor Locks. On our descent we turned on all of our anti ice equipment. The system uses hot air from the engine and heats up the forward part of each engine and the leading edges of the wings. At night it is hard to see any part of the nose of the airplane to observe if ice is building up. It was obvious we were descending through icing conditions as an indicating “icing” light illuminated on one of our panels. We broke out of the clouds at about 1000 feet above the ground. The winds were gusting to the edge of the crosswind limit for the airplane. It was raining hard and there was something odd about the rain that I could not put my finger on. The autopilot disconnected as it was incapable keeping up with the rapidly changing wind conditions. There is a saying amongst us pilots that we use when adding extra speed to our final approach speed which comes off of a computer at our fingertips. We use the expression “adding 10 for mom” which means the final approach airspeed will be increased by 10 knots to give us an extra margin of safety against stall speeds as our mothers would of course insist upon. I added 15. About 2 feet above the ground I cut the power to idle and the airplane dropped like a rock. It wasn’t unsafe but it wasn’t the smoothest landing I have made either. Taxiing in I noticed again that the rain looked odd. We finally realized we were seeing drops of rain going from the liquid state to the solid state (ice) before it hit the ground. There were small patches of ice pellets on the ground. There is a rule that prohibits us from flying through areas of known or forecast icing. When we left Atlanta there was no icing reported or forecast. It was also late at night and there were just a few arrivals at that time. When you find yourself in icing conditions the only thing you can do is to get out of it as quickly as you can. At the gate in Windsor Locks I stepped into the Jetway to help a young mother open a stroller. I glanced out the Jetway window and saw that the fuselage of my airplane was covered in a thin layer of ice. I now had an explanation as to why the airplane dropped those last 2 feet. Ice adds weight and diminishes the aerodynamic efficiency. I have never seen that before and I don’t want to see it again. I called the dispatchers and let them know they now had an area of known icing which would prohibit other airplanes being dispatched through that airspace until it cleared up. I am sure that somewhere down the road for who knows what reason flyguy will be adding 10 for mom.

Boston Sports Fans

2006-01-08T13:04:00.000-08:00

Bostonians are some of the greatest sports fans in this country. I happened to have had a lengthy layover there recently, during which the Patriots won against Jacksonville 28 to 3 in their first playoff game of the 2005/2006 season. One of the best places to go to in Boston when the locals get revved up over one of their teams is Sullivan’s Tap on Canal St. Make no mistake this is a no frills bar with a polite but serious staff (that word is on the t-shirts they wear) who efficiently dole out lots of liquid. The younger staffers run an almost continuous trek down into the basement with six empty cases stacked up and come back up with four. This establishment is unique in that the bar is one city block long. That’s right, if you walk in one door when someone else comes in opposite you, they will be one block away. The place is narrow and standing room only, the best condition to chat it up with the locals about sports. They know it and they know it well with lots of passion. Getting involved in a conversation is easy as anyone jumps into one at any time. I was given heartfelt sympathy for my 49ers and was welcomed in spite of my loyalties. One couple invited me for dinner the next day for homemade “lumpies” a delicacy only found in New England. Had to work, so the lumpies will have to wait. Did I mention it was about 25 degrees outside? You have to understand that I am the one who sounds funny in a place like that. That thick New England accent makes it that much better, “do you like lobstah”? I was told by one such gentleman that every can of Boston Baked Beans has only 239 nine beans in it. When I asked why he said, “because if you add one more bean they would be too fahty”. If you don’t get it ask a Bostonian to set you straight. Be Safe, FlyGuy.

Memphis at sunrise

2006-01-08T12:28:00.000-08:00

Those are the lights of the city of Memphis at sunrise. Memphis is one of the cities that one can recognize from its distinct light pattern. Chicago, Las Vegas, Reno, Denver, Albuquerque, Birmingham, Kansas City are some of the others.

The Golden Gate Bridge

2006-01-08T12:18:00.000-08:00

After taking this photo on a layover in San Francisco I felt as though I had to bend my rules of showing you only photos taken in the sky. It was a magnificent day, perfect amount of sun and heat from it, t-shirt weather.

Kennedy Space Center

2006-01-08T12:06:00.000-08:00

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This is a shot of the Kennedy Space Center taken on a climb out from Tampa heading out over the Atlantic. We were passing through about 15000 feet on a vector to intercept an over water route. You can see the vehicle assembly building and the space shuttle runway just above right center of the photo. This is a rare shot as this airspace is normally restricted.

Thanksgiving Flying

2005-11-27T13:17:00.000-08:00

Hope you all had a pleasant weekend with family and friends. I worked Thanksgiving morning, flying a Boeing 757 from Los Angeles to Fort Lauderdale. It was a full flight. I had not worked a holiday in over ten years so I was surprised at all the people flying on Thanksgiving. Leaving LA at 11:30 am we were scheduled to get into Florida at 7:45 pm. It seems that no matter the day of the year people need or want to get someplace even if it means missing a holiday. The passenger mix was normal with a little bit of everyone. It oddly seemed like a normal day to me. The flight was uneventful, the weather in Florida perfect. I spent the night in Coconut Grove and took my first officer out for whatever sort of dinner we could find as by now it was 9:00 pm on Thanksgiving night. A short walk from the hotel is an area of eateries and bars catering to tourists. If something was open it was going to be there. Geared toward people younger than me, the establishments have names like Bahamas Breeze, Tequila Joe’s, Rave, Rum Runners, etc. These places have never done much for me, especially the ones where you can’t hear yourself think let alone the person next to you screaming in your ear. Sometimes though, these are the only places open at 1:00 am still serving food after a long day of flying. Most of these establishments are very understanding and sympathetic to our need for food. A few of these places know were pilots when we walk in as I was told at one place that “usually every night two guys that look like the two of you walk in here at about this time looking for something to eat” So much for trying to be anonymous. The only place serving food was an outside bar. The first thing I noticed were the people sitting by themselves, hands on a drink, staring into their glasses. I have always wondered what it is they see or don’t want to see in those liquid crystal balls. Sadly, this was the best they were going to do today. Our waitress gave us the menu which was limited to wings, tenders, and other deep fried delicacies. I asked her if anything else was available and she informed us that the only other thing was a “Thanksgiving like dinner”. Upon further questioning of the young woman, I ordered what was supposed to be a turkey dinner. Within 5 minutes a white jacketed chef emerged from somewhere I was never able to figure out. He just sort of appeared out of nowhere. He served us two huge plates of turkey, dressing, potatoes, yams, and pumpkin pie. We dug in and didn’t say much to each other while we ate. Our waitress however, was a talker. Perhaps it was my father like appearance that led her to go on about her boyfriend who doesn’t give her enough attention. I’m sure it was obvious to her that once our plates were put in front of us we were not going anywhere. A fire hose could not have moved us out of our seats, so we were a captive audience for this young woman’s lament. The men staring at their glasses saved us as they individually ordered new drinks in new glasses. We left with bellies full and smiles on our faces. Being able to find a meal like this, on a day like this, at a time like this, is tough. Sometimes the best things happen when you stumble right into it.

2005-11-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

Sunset from 40,000 feet off the east coast, November 2005.

Here comes the Jet S

2005-11-15T10:04:00.000-08:00

Here comes the Jet Stream.

Did you know that our planet wobbles around the equatorial plane?  It tilts back and forth over a year toward or away from the sun.  Until December 21st (solstice), earth will be tilting away, and then it starts tilting toward the sun for six months until June 21st(solstice), the longest day of the year. The process then starts over again.

Starting in the fall the fast moving rivers of air that usually hang out in the far Northern hemisphere start their migration south.  These winds almost always blow west to east.  They spend the late fall and winter over the continental United States.  It looks like the fast moving rivers of air are back and we are like flying salmon swimming with the current or against it.  Winds can easily be over 100 knots with rare speeds of close to 200 knots.  For the record a knot is a standard measurement of speed used worldwide.  In the U.S. we use statute miles.  The conversion is 1.15 statute miles for every knot.  If you’re flying along at 450 knots, you’re also doing 517 statute miles per hour.  The next time you get pulled over for doing 75 in a 65 mph zone, just explain to the officer that your were really only doing 65 knots, hey you never know it might just get you off the hook! It’s great when you have a tail wind; you’re screaming across the earth at close to 600 knots and it stinks when you have a headwind as your ground speed can be half of that.  I have had pilots tell me about flying small prop airplanes close to the ground in headwinds so strong they moved backwards. Really.

So this last weekend I flew back and forth across the U.S. two times.  It took about four and a half hours from the west coast to the east coast and about six hours coming back. I remember a few years back flying from L.A. to Boston and the flight time being just under four hours as we did over 600 knots all the way.   The two legs east were red eyes and the sunrises for both were incredible.  The simple act of seeing a magnificent fiery sunrise is worthy of its own story. So a new season of winds starts again and thousands of pilots and airplanes will play a daily game of cat and mouse with them.  Flying north or south of the jet stream to avoid the headwinds, flying through the heart of it to ride the tailwinds, and climbing and descending to avoid pockets of turbulence.  I also had a layover in San Francisco.  I highly recommend a visit to Tommy’s Joint on Geary St. and Vaness. It is a one of a kind place with great food, lots of history, and good prices.  Tell them FlyGuy sent you.  Be Safe.

Safety, Safety,Safety!

2005-10-31T12:45:00.000-08:00

The one thing that always comes first in the flying game is safety. It is put above passenger comfort, convenience, and on time performance. Safety is put above economy and fuel efficiency. For pilots this is our mantra, cornerstone, and the primary function of our job. Today I write to you about another group of professionals, the air traffic controllers who guide us through those immense halls of air. They handle up to 5000 aircraft in any one hour, 50,000 a day. FlyGuy has unconditional respect for the men and women who consistently and tirelessly help keep you safe in more ways than you could imagine. I am writing you today for one reason only, they need your help.

America’s air traffic controllers are concerned about the potential effects of FAA mismanagement on the safety and integrity of our nation’s aviation system. I have learned about a website dedicated to this problem and I would urge all of you to check it out. I believe the problem is real from first hand experience. Their web site has large amounts of information that goes way beyond what I could do here. The link to their website is: http://www.flyussafe.com/. Be safe, FlyGuy.

Flying into a hurricane

2005-10-27T23:23:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday night, October 23rd, I was settling in to fly a redeye from Vegas to Florida. We were scheduled to arrive in Orlando about two hours after Hurricane Wilma was scheduled to slam into Florida’s Southwest coast. It seemed like every flight to Florida was being cancelled, except mine. After a lengthy discussion with my flight dispatcher, I was satisfied that a safe flight could be made. If upon arrival over Florida the weather became severe, I had plenty of gas to divert north into fair weather. The Boeing 757 I was operating that night, has one of those passenger friendly entertainment systems in each and every seat. I knew that many of my passengers would be watching among other things the Weather Channel, Fox News, and CNN. One thing all three have in common is spin. I didn’t want my passengers believing every word that the spinsters would spit out. When it comes to flying and your safety you should know two things. One is that the media rarely gets anything right about flying. Two is that we pilots have more weather data and specific flight information than they ever will. I took my time and made an announcement to the cabin about our situation and that towards the end of our flight, the descent into Orlando would be rough. Indeed, our flight was smooth until we started our descent. I have experienced worse turbulence but the air that night was unforgiving. We got beat up pretty bad on the way down and I know it was uncomfortable for everyone, but the machine took it all in stride. It was raining so hard that we heard the rain inside the cockpit above all the other noise, and I wear a noise suppression headset! I had the wing and engine anti ice on and for an extra precaution I turned the engine ignition systems on to a continuous setting. In the unlikely event that an engine flamed out, the igniters would help automatically restart the engine. The headwinds on final approached 70 knots and lowered to gusts of 45 knots at touchdown. My copilot was flying the airplane and he did a sterling job. The touchdown was fairly smooth considering the high velocity wind gusts. When we slowed down enough to taxi clear I noticed that the rain was blowing sideways. Great sheets of water a couple of inches thick covered everything in sight, taxiways, grass areas, buildings, and the ramp areas. The wind was moving the sheets at about 30 mph. When we cleared the runway, the control tower made an announcement that the airport was shutting down. We taxied to our parking area and were not surprised that I was unable to see the taxi lines used to turn into the gate area. My ground crew was soaked, they could barely see, and the wind was making them all lean in the same direction. I just took my time moving that last 50 feet to the stop bar. After we shutdown the engines and turned the seatbelt sign off, we packed our bags and cleaned up for the next crew. Our schedule was to return in about 10 hours to fly to LAX. We just wanted to get to bed. Suddenly there was a knock on the door. We opened it and the lead flight attendant told us the passengers wanted to see us. This is not a usual occurrence. Both of us went back to the exit door. What happened next took us both by surprise. Every passenger getting off thanked us, hugged us, shook our hands, high fived us, etc. The flight attendants thanked us! We were speechless and that is very rare for a pilot. We left after the last person got off and walked in silence down the concourse, going to bed as people walked by us who were trying to wake up. As we were descending down an escalator into baggage claim a couple of young men behind us wanted to know if we just flew in from Vegas. “Yeah”, I said. “You dudes are freakin awesome”, we heard. “Thanks”, we said. Then we, just stared at each other. Our van driver was waiting for us, nice guy wearing one of those hotel uniforms. He had our keys and sign in sheet so all we had to do was walk to our rooms. I will never forget that flight, not because of an atmospheric anomaly called Wilma, or rain so loud it penetrated the flying bunker I was nestled in or the rough and tumble descent to landing. For people like us these are normal events in a different world. It is simply what we do.

For every touch, hand shake, eye contact, hug, word of thanks and praise from people I will most likely never see again, I just want to say that I will never forget that flight. You people are freakin awesome!

2005-10-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

The picture was taken at approximately 12,000 feet over New Jersey, flying East toward Manhatten. You can see the flight path would take you over the Hudson River, Cental Park, the East River, and out over Long Island.

Click on the picture to enlarge it and you can see the runways at La Guardia at the 10 oclock position and the runways at JFK at the 2 oclock position. The runways at Newark are under the nose of the airplane out of view.

This is some of the busiest airspace in the world. On a clear day like this you can see arrivals and departures at Newark, LaGuardia, and JFK at the same time. A lot of jets in a small airspace.